rational male

Boundaries

Urban-Boundaries-1-with-copyright1

The Mate Guarding topic of last week’s post made for some lively debate. It usually does because it’s this behavior, and the root motivators of it, that gets to the heart of dynamics such as an Alpha / Beta mindset, the Scarcity Mentality, Hypergamy, issues of morality and maybe an uncomfortable realization that your LTR has been subject to those motivators.

The purpose and approach men have with regard to mate guarding usually comes down to two positions.

The first being a moral high-ground idea that women do in fact have a moral or rational agency and thus have an obligation to keep their own Hypergamy in check. This may be from a religious perspective, but more often it’s based upon men’s idealistic equalist hopes that a woman can rationally be expected to parse her own investment in what men think should be Relational Equity.

Or in other words, women should know better, and be expected to cooperate with a male imperative by self-regulating their Hypergamous impulses as a matter of personal and social responsibility.

On a limbic level Hypergamy doesn’t care about Relational Equity and openly appealing to a woman’s reason, rationality or sense of responsibility a man believes she should be beholden to is counterproductive in influencing her genuine desires. However, this is usually a self-guided hope that women will recognize and regulate those behaviors at the risk of being socially ostracized in an already feminine-primary social environment.

Again, this can be couched in a religious expectation, but in a secular-equalist sense it amounts to putting the burden of mate guarding on women by presuming their ‘equal rationality’ will result in women mate guarding themselves by policing their own Hypergamy in men’s best interests. Anything less either makes them convictionless or the nebulous “low quality woman” who wont play by the old-order rules and expectations.

The second approach is a proactive mate guarding based on the presumption that mate guarding is a ‘defense’ against mate poaching by other, presumably (but not necessarily) more Alpha men than the one doing the guarding.

Within that context it’s understandable why men would want to protect their personal investment in a woman. What woman wouldn’t be aroused by the prospect of being fought over by two men she perceives as Alpha rivals? It’s a strong affirmation of her desirability and SMV.

Where it turns into a Beta Tell is when a man’s lifestyle revolves around ‘keeping’ her in a possessive sense for fear of losing her because she’s his only viable option for sending his genetic material into the future. That kind of mate guarding is the kind inspired by a scarcity mentality, but it’s also due to long evolved, subconscious sensitivities to her behavioral inconsistencies at or around her time of ovulation.

This is what Dr. Hasselton was getting into in her studies – ovulatory shift in mate preferences created an evolved sensitivity of them in men which in turn produced contingency behaviors (mate guarding) to ensure he wasn’t wasting his parental investment efforts with a child that wasn’t his own.

An evolved mate guarding sensitivity and contingent strategy was basically insurance against men’s cuckoldry risks.

I would argue that a contingent mate guarding strategy evolved not as a direct response to Alpha (or even Beta) competition stresses, but rather due to women’s innate Hypergamy, their sexual pluralism and the potential for parental investment deception when women were left with their Hypergamy unchecked.

If a woman’s predominant perception of you is Alpha, if her mental point of origin is one in which she recognizes her own SMV as being subordinate to your own, she wont be asking your “permission” to go to Vegas with her girlfriends for a weekend because her desire for her Alpha will be stronger than her peers influence on her during her ovulation week.

In theory, no woman who sees you as her perceived Alpha and Hypergamous best interest will want to ‘cheat’ on you – so the idea wont even occur to her. I realize this sounds simplistic until you consider the readiness with which most men will similarly isolate themselves socially, putting off friends and family in preference to spending his time with what he believes is a high-value woman.

Demonstrate, Never Explicate

From The 48 Laws of Power

Law 9

Win through your Actions, Never through Argument

Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory:  The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion.  It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word.  Demonstrate, do not explicate.

There is no greater demonstration of higher value for a man than walking away from a woman. Even a woman’s strongest perception of higher value cannot compete with the self-certainty of value a man has when he disconnects himself from a woman who’s already accepted him for her intimacy.

While Dread (even passive dread) is a strong signal of a man’s higher value, removing your own intimate acceptance from a woman and confirming the value her Hypergamous nature questioned about you is the last word in DHV.

For the first half of their lives, even the most mediocre of women become accustomed to men qualifying for their attention, intimacy and sexual access. Women quickly learn the utility of their first, best, agency with men – the power of sexual control.

So when that agency is proven useless with a man, that control is eliminated and she begins to question her capacity for that control. By removing himself from dependency on that agency he confirms that his SMV is more valuable than her own.

A lot of men report that their unprompted disinterest in sex with a woman, a wife, a girlfriend, often provokes a woman’s imagination with regard to her control and/or inspires a greater sexual determination to please him in order to reestablish this control when they next engage in sex.

There’s precious little that’s more effective at reestablishing Frame for a man than the demonstration of higher value walking away from a woman’s accepted intimacy represents. Some of the best sex you’ll have in your life will come after a reunited breakup.

Now, the reason I’ve detailed this is because the foundations of a man maintaining Frame within a relationship are rooted in limiting or removing this sexual agency and demonstrating higher value as part of that process.

Establishing Boundaries

London Towers on the SoSuave forum started a fairly contentious debate on how a man ought to establish boundaries within a relationship last week:

In my last LTR I never set boundaries, let her hang with her ex, guys, never got jealous, just didn’t give a fuck…because my life was going well and I had no insecurity she wouldn’t do anything because I was the shit. She even wanted her ex to hang with us, just so she could show me off. This actually seemed to work for me as I had some natural alpha state for the first 1 year due to life success and she could feel this, thus other guys were just orbiters. I would even joke to her about who she found attractive in the bar, that’s how self confident I was. This would actually make her want me more.

Then cracks in my game came out, I was going through a rough patch with life and suddenly the game shifted. She would start to compare me to other guys including her ex in a negative way. I suddenly became insecure because I didn’t feel Alpha anymore due to life not going well and suddenly started enforcing boundaries which she would constantly test because she knew I lost my game unlike when I was Alpha and didn’t give a shit. Enforcing boundaries was actually coming from an insecure place and I don’t think your words mean shit if you ain’t got your game tight.

Now, I’m not too sure how I would handle my next LTR. I’m in the process of becoming alpha again, but now truly alpha as in my inner game this time. But would I now still have the not give a sh1t attitude if my girl still hung out with her ex/guys?

Part of me thinks if my game is tight, I give her great sex, pluck at her emotional spectrum, she rides on the magic carpet of my exciting life (which comes from knowing my life mission) she will be hooked on me in a multiple of ways and if she knew I would drop her cold and can easily replace her if she doesn’t provide me with the affection/sex that I need.. she will enforce her own boundaries.

This is the only true boundary I can provide. A girls attention will drop if she starts even emotionally to involve someone else. At that point you just freeze immediately. So the only boundary you can ever enforce is through your attention and her subtle awareness you have options and will walk away with ease at the very beginning of her not providing for your needs. That loss is something she could not deal with.

I’d encourage readers to take the time to read through that discussion and the various approaches to establishing boundaries within a relationship (or even non-exclusive plates you may be spinning). After picking through the differing perspectives I made the connection between establishing boundaries and men’s natural predilection for mate guarding behaviors.

Most of the expressed perspectives tend to side with either of the two mate guarding approaches I mentioned at the beginning of today’s post; one, in which women are rationally expected to police their own Hypergamous impulses, and the other, where an active (and equally reasoned) explicating of boundaries are overtly declared as an ultimatum in an effort to protect a man against the parental investment risks of being cuckolded by a woman he knows can’t be expected not to otherwise succumb to her Hypergamous impulses.

If you notice how London Towers’ story unfolds here he essentially proceeded by demonstrating his higher value, secure in the confidence of it, only to have that DHV eroded due to his life’s circumstance.

This is when the boundary of Alpha indifference he’d organically set (albeit unknowingly), based upon his value, was challenged in his drop of status and esteem. I’ve elaborated in the past about a man’s burden of performance or how women’s concept of ‘love’ is based on a passive opportunism of what a man is (rather than who he is), but you get the picture illustrated for you here.

Next, commenter Soolaimon picks up the opposite end of the extreme:

These boundary guys have it ass backwards.

They are judging women by their words instead of judging them by their actions.

Judge women by their actions and not their words.

Agreeing to a boundary is only her words that these guys think will keep her from cheating.

Women who cut out other men from their lives on their own is a woman who understands what an exclusive relationship is.

Those are her actions you judge her on.

Not useless words she can go back on at any moment.

[…]

Smart classy intelligent women already know what exclusivity means they don’t need to have it defined when they are defining it for you by removing other men on their own.

Women do that for Alphas and not betas who need to set a boundary out of fear.

Women that are really into you will agree to what you want with no problem.

When they lose interest they will still cheat on you making your boundary useless.

If your woman knows what exclusivity means and has the same values as you why are you so terrified to put a ring on her finger and marry her?

There’s a lot to consider when you establish boundaries with a woman. Essentially those boundaries men wish to establish and have respected by a woman really just amount to a codified form of mate guarding.

When you think about it, this is what (at least in an old social order) the marriage contract was meant to insure from a male-beneficial perspective – an assurance of fidelity, but also a contractual insurance against Hypergamy.

Considering the contemporary risks involved, in the current social environment there are any number of reasons men are wary of marrying a woman, but what marriage has become is really a challenge to what a man believes about mate guarding and his confidence in controlling a woman’s Hypergamous nature based upon his degree of desirability to her.

Though I don’t disagree in principle, Soolaimon’s exaggeration is founded on the idea that there’s always going to be a bigger fish; another AMOG to seize your woman’s interest should your combination of Game, material and emotional provisioning, or ambition for such be lacking.

Like most absolutists, he does little to contextualize the preconceptions a woman may have with a particular man they’re already involved with. A woman may fantasize about sex with a more Alpha male during her ovulatory phase, but that doesn’t mean she has the opportunity to realize it – even for “smart classy independent women”.

That said, and after London Towers’ example, it’s impossible not to come to a conclusion that implied, demonstrated boundaries – ones that have actionable consequences of intimate and invested loss (i.e. Dread) – are preferable to explicated, but ultimately appealed-reason declarations of boundaries that are negotiated insurance policies to limit her Hypergamy.

While I do believe boundaries are a necessary part of a relationship, it’s far better for women to discover them for what they are, and the consequences of them, by demonstration rather than overt explanation.

The hand burned by the stove teaches better than any warning.

The only person who’s behavior you can control is your own, but that behavior can have a significant impact on the behaviors of others.

 

Mental Point of Origin

PoO

I’m working another contract gig for the next few months, and recently I had an interesting encounter with a new girl on my team. She’s 34, Japanese (dual citizenship) maybe an HB 6.5-7 and over the summer she hooked up with a guy here who she had a somewhat monogamous relationship with until he transferred to Australia last August.

This girl is ‘in love’ with this guy who’s not aloof to her, and not fully indifferent, but he sets himself as his first priority and never considered turning down his transfer in order to continue anything with her. The guy is nothing special to look at. No muscle definition, kind of fat-thin if you know what I mean, but pasty white, ginger, not out of shape but not in shape, maybe 5′ 11″.

She cannot shut up about what a ‘real man’ he is. She bought a $2,200 ticket to visit him for a week and a half in January and has made a personalized calendar as a gift for him that has photos all of these events they shared together over the summer, every month with a heartfelt description of some thing she loves about him included.

To her, this guy is Alpha as fuck. On Tinder, this guy would be a left swipe 100% of the time. His attitude is indifferent Alpha, but he’s self-concerned. This girl idolizes him.

Granted there’s a lot more going on here to consider; her being well past the Epiphany Phase, necessitous and urgently wanting to consolidate on a long term monogamy makes this guy into an idealized prospect. Thus he became her Alpha, if not anyone else’s. Granted, it’s mostly situational; she thinks she wants to have kids with him and at 34 that clock is about to expire, but she has to come to him, literally and figuratively.

However, although the guy is definitely a ‘contextual Alpha’, he’s got a genuine Alpha-ish bearing that translates into his being self-aware of his condition and really not giving a damn what anyone else might think. He’s got total Frame control, but it’s not an intentional control, and that natural casualness of indifference only makes her want to please him that much more. There may be a cultural element to this as well, but to hear her talk about other, lesser men, it’s apparent she’s been very much westernized in her sense of entitlement.

Self-Concern Without Self-Awareness

People think I’m crazy to hold up a guy like Corey Worthington as the example of an Alpha Buddah, but this guy has the same unpracticed, self-unaware, mojo as Corey.

Personally, I was at my most Alpha when I didn’t realize I was. That’s not Zen, it’s just doing what came natural for me at a point in my life when I had next to nothing materially, only a marginal amount of social proof, but a strong desire to enjoy women for the sake of just enjoying them in spite of it.

I’ve mentioned before, the most memorable sex I’ve had has been when I was flat broke (mostly). It didn’t matter that I lived in a 2 room studio in North Hollywood or had beer and mac & cheese in the fridge – I got laid and I had women come to me for it.

It didn’t take my doing anything for a woman to get laid or hold her interest. All I did was make myself my mental point of origin. It’s when I started putting women as a goal, making them into more than just a source of enjoyment, that I transferred that mental point of origin to her and I became the necessitous one.

A lot of guys will call that being ‘needy’, and I suppose it is, but it’s a neediness that results from putting a woman (or another person) as your first thought – your mental point of origin.

I’ve used this term in a few posts so I thought it deserved a bit more explanation.

Your mental point of origin is really your own internalized understanding about how you yourself fit into your own understanding of Frame.

If Frame is the dominant narrative of a relationship (not limited to just romantic relations), your mental point of origin is the import and priority to which you give to the people and/or ideas involved in that relationship. It is the first thought you have when considering any particular of a relationship, and it’s often so ingrained in us that it becomes an autonomous mental process.

For most of us our understanding of that point of origin develops when we’re children. Kids are necessarily “selfish”, sometimes cruel and greedy because our first survival instinct is to naturally put ourselves as our mental point of origin. Only later, with parenting and learning social skills do we begin to share, cooperate, empathize and sympathize as our mental point of origin shifts to putting the concerns of others before our own.

Young boys are generally very Alpha because of this unlearned self-importance. This is the source of the almost zen-like, mater-of-fact Alpha bearing of Corey Worthington. As I said, he’s not a ‘man’ anyone ought to aspire to, but he is an Alpha without intent or self-awareness.

There is a ‘first thought’ balance we have to maintain in a pro-social respect in order to develop healthy relationships. The problem we run into today is one in which boys are (largely) raised to be the men who provide more than they need in order to establish a future family. That learned, conditioned, mental point of origin is almost always focused outward and onto the people he hopes will reciprocate by placing him as their own point of origin.

Natural feminine solipsism makes this exchange a losing prospect. Women are both raised and affirmed by a vast social mechanism that not just encourages them to put themselves as their mental point of origin, but it shames and ostracizes them for placing it on someone or something other than themselves.

By now I’m sure that much of this comes off as some encouragement towards a retaliatory selfishness or narcissism, but putting oneself as his own point of origin doesn’t have to mean being anti-social or sociopathic. It requires a conscious decision to override an internalized understanding of oneself, but by placing yourself as your mental point of origin you are better positioned to help others and judge who is worth that effort.

It often requires some emotional trauma for men to realign themselves as their own point of origin, and I feel this is a necessary part of unplugging, but the real challenge is in how you deal with that trauma in a Red Pill aware state. If you are to kill the Beta in you, the first step is placing yourself as your mental point of origin.

So my weekend discussion questions are this: Are you your mental point of origin?

Is your first inclination to consider how something in your relationships will affect you or your girlfriend/wife/family/boss?

When men fall into relationships with authoritarian, feminine-primary women, their first thought about any particulars of their actions is how his woman will respond to it, not his own involvement or his motivations for it. Are you a peacekeeper?

Do you worry that putting yourself as your own first priority will turn a woman off or do you think it will engage her more fully?

Are you concerned that doing so may lead to your own form of solipsism, or do you think ‘enlightened self-interests’ serves your best interests and those with whom you want to help or become intimate with?

Beta Tells

couple-talking-3

 

TRP poster, needathrowawayplease from the Red Pill subreddit has a timely question / observation:

Knowing your SO’s menstrual cycle can be extremely powerful. [Indeed]

During the fertile stage of her cycle, thousands of years of evolution mean her body is screaming at her to get knocked up by an alpha male. A simple test to determine is she sees you as her alpha fucks is to not initiate during the fertile period of her cycle and observe her behavior: does she come to you to get fucked? Does her body language or physical behavior change when she’s fertile. Maybe she touches you more often or more intimately or plays the role of the seductress: things like coming to bed wearing lingerie where she usually wouldn’t? Even if she’s relatively low-sex drive and doesn’t initiate, does she at least respond more passionately to your sexual advances or orgasm more easily or intensely when she’s fertile?

You obviously can’t draw conclusions from a single cycle but you should eventually see a pattern – and the more she values you sexually during her fertile period the better. If she isn’t doing anything differently or reacting to you differently when she’s fertile, something’s up.

This test can have false negatives but not false positives. There’s no false positive case where she suddenly starts riding you while you’re watching the Packers game but she doesn’t see you as her alpha. But it can have false negatives where she doesn’t initiate but still sees you as her alpha. If she isn’t initiating when she’s fertile (and you aren’t initiating in order to test her reaction), it could be due to stress, lack of time, being too used to you doing the initiation, etc. But at the very least she should be demonstrating increased passion and sexual ecstasy during her fertile period.

At a high-level:

The best case: She initiates during her fertile period if you don’t. She gets cravings for your D.

The OK case: She responds more passionately and orgasms more easily during her fertile period.

The uh-oh, something might be wrong case: No observable change during her fertile period.

The beta case: Dead bedroom, what the fuck are you even doing (sorry if you got married and you can’t get out).

Of course if she’s an extremely sexual being and all of the above describes your sex life 24/7, then none of this should even concern you.

Disclaimer: Once again, this test is a tool that works best for women with higher sex drives (who really wanna get fucked when they’re fertile). If your 37 year old wife of 15 years fucks you when you want and isn’t cheating, you’re fine. I don’t think test applies to all women (LOL, broke /trp/ rules oops) but it’s useful nonetheless.

Lets presume for a moment that neither a controlled experiment nor an uncontrolled, but documented, correlatively scientific, sociological field study has ever been performed to test the principle of feminine Hypergamy. For a moment, as a man, imagine yourself living in a period of time prior to any formalized school of psychology; pre-turn of the 20th century. There is no Pavlov, there is no Skinner, there is no Freud.

Using only personal observations, observations of learned behaviors related by your father and brothers, male friends and the intergender experiences of a very socially isolated (by today’s standards) group of  people who make up your peers, and a restrictively limited access to any classic philosophical literature beyond the Judeo-Christian Bible – what would you presume would be the nature inimical to women and the feminine?

Would your observations, intuition and the education proffered by your father, brothers and other influential male friends and relations lead to an insight to know what Hypergamy is, how it motivates women and how to control for, or capitalize on it?

Not only do I believe it would, but I would argue that, up until the sexual revolution and the past 60 or so years, men have had an innate and learned understanding of Hypergamy, how it functions, and how to control for it.

To be sure, it didn’t have the formal name of ‘Hypergamy’ – in fact that term was until recently, strictly defined and reserved for “women with the tendency to marry above their socioeconomic level” in polite, pop-psychology circles – but men knew Hypergamy before the manopshere (re)exposed its true definition.

Waging Hypergamy

Resistance to the uncomfortable truths innate to the female experience is to be expected from women – until the advent of Open Hypergamy, the Feminine Imperative needed the sisterhood to be united and its secrets jealously guarded to the point of cognitive dissonance.

My guess is that most of my female critics would still agree with the basic parameters of Hypergamy, but what I doubt they’re aware of is that in denying the inherent biological nature of female Hypergamy women must also reject the sociological, psychological and (observably) behavioral aspects of Hypergamy inherent (and largely subconscious) in women.

Commenter Mookie:

“As women approach the Epiphany Phase (later the Wall) and realize the decay of their SMV (in comparison to younger women), they become progressively more incentivized towards attraction to the qualities a man possesses that will best satisfy the long-term security of the Beta Bucks side of her Hypergamy demands.”

Did your woman say, “you’re (so much) different than the guys I used to date.” Or, “I finally got smart and found a good guy.” If so, this is clear evidence that you are her Beta Bucks guy. Maybe she used to date DJs, NFL players, drug dealers, whatever. If these guys are different types of guys than you, do NOT continue the relationship. She has no clue, but she is rationalizing her choice in her mind. You will pay a severe price later, as in cheating, nonstop bitchiness, or sudden divorce. Find a girl that always dated guys like you. She may have swooned for the lead guitarist, but if she didn’t devote her early 20s to chasing him, you’re okay.

Beta Tells

One of the more common questions I’m asked in consults is whether something a guy did was ‘Beta’ or not. Usually it was a situation wherein the guy was instinctually sensitive to his own behavior in context to his Frame and how the woman he was dealing with perceived him. In most cases a man knows when he’s slipped in his perception of dominance with a woman, they just look for a third party confirmation of it – which is then followed by more rationalizations for why his behavior shouldn’t be considered Beta because they believe women are equally rational, equally forgiving, agents as men (really he is) are.

From Gut Check:

Whenever you feel something isn’t quite right in your gut, what this is is your subconscious awareness alerting you to inconsistencies going on around you. We tend to ignore these signs in the thinking that our rational mind ‘knows better’ and things really aren’t what they seem. It’s not as bad as you’re imagining, and you can even feel shame or guilt with yourself for acknowledging that lack of trust. However, it’s just this internal rationalization that keeps us blind to the obvious that our subconscious is trying to warn us about. Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. So when that predictable behavior changes even marginally, our instinctual perceptions fire off all kinds of warnings. Some of which can actually effect us physically.

It’s at this point most guys make the mistake of acting on the “good communication solves everything” feminized meme and go the full disclosure truth route, which only really leads to more rationalizations and repression of what’s really going on. What they don’t realize is that the MEDIUM is the message; her behavior, her nuances, the incongruousness in her words and demeanor (and how your gut perceives them) is the real message. There is an irregularity in her behavior that your subconscious is alerting you to which your consciousness either cannot or will not recognize.

I began the Alpha Tells post with the intent of recognizing how a woman behaves when she’s in the presence of a Man she perceives to be Alpha. A lot of men get hung up on trying to ‘act’ Alpha; wanting to ape (and hopefully internalize) the behavioral tells a more confident Alpha displays.

Consequently there’s a lot of debate about how men posture and how they naturally display these Alpha cues, but I think the best gauge of what defines those cues is not in men’s displays, but women’s behaviors and attitudes that are prompted by a perception of Alpha-ness.

And just as women will respond viscerally to an Alpha perception, they will also manifest behaviors which indicate her subconscious knows she’s dealing with a Beta aligned male.

It’s easy to pick apart what a guy thinks are his own Alpha tells, but it’s far more uncomfortable to dissect women’s Beta tells when they’re in the presence of men they perceive to be Beta. Much of what I’ll outline that follows will be hard to read for many guys, and as always you’re free to disagree.

My purpose here isn’t to bash Betas, rather it’s to increase awareness of women’s behaviors toward them. As I’ve explained above, try to put these behaviors into a Hypergamous context and how they would be perceived by women who’ve evolved to have an instinctual sensitivity to these Beta behaviors, as well as expressions of Beta attitudes in your words and emotional emphasis.

I could very easily compile a list of behaviors that are simply the reverse of the Alpha Tells I noted in the previous post, but it’s much more important to address the root reasons for these Beta Tells:

  • Does she initiate sex or affection spontaneously?
  • Does she entertain a large pool of “male friend” orbiters with the expectation of you being ‘mature enough’ to accept it?
  • Does she keep a core peer group of ‘girlfriends’ she insists on prioritizing over being with you? Frequent GNOs?
  • Has she explained to you how she was so different  in college and how she’s glad those days are behind her now?
  • Is she experiencing her Epiphany Phase?
  • Does she cite “mismatched libidos” as a reason for her lack of sexual interest in you now that you’re married or living together (even after she’s had better sex with you or a former lover when single)?
  • Is she averse or repulsed by your ejaculate being on her skin, in her mouth or overly concerned with soiling a bed sheet?
  • Will she have sex with you anywhere besides the bed?
  • Do you perform oral on her to get her off more than you have intercourse?
  • Is she a wide-eyed lover or does she squint her eyes closed while having sex? Is sex a chore for her to perform?
  • If you’re married, did she assume your last name, or did she insist on a hyphenated surname for herself?
  • When you’re together does her regular, unpracticed body posture indicate an openness or are you always having to break into her intimate space?
  • Is she preoccupied with her side of the family or a certain pet in preference to being concerned with your well-being?
  • Is she consciously aware of being 1-2 points above your own relative SMV? Is she overt about it?
  • Does she presume authority in your relationship? Do you accede this authority as a matter of (equalist) belief?

There are many more tells of course, and I hope more will be presented in the commentary, but it’s important to understand that these behaviors and attitudes are manifestations of a woman who on some level of consciousness understands that she’s dealing with a Beta man.

I should also mention that, as with Stephen’s case in Moments of Clarity, there are particular phases of a woman’s life when she becomes more attuned to dealing with Beta men due to perceived necessities on her part. A clear understanding of how these phases predispose women to convince themselves to be more accepting of Beta behaviors and a Beta mindset is imperative to avoiding the common pitfalls men encounter with regard to issues of Frame in their relationships.

Beta men are all too eager to believe they’ve matured into being a self-defined Alpha when a semi-attractive 29 year old in the midst of her Epiphany Phase is giving him wide-eyed indicators of interest in him. Only after she’s consolidated on that long-term security does he realize the plans her sexual strategy had for him.

Predisposition for Mate Guarding

One of the best Beta tells is how defensive a guy gets about the subject of mate guarding.

An Alpha has little preoccupation with mate guarding because subconsciously he knows he has sexual options. That applies both within and without monogamy. I’m presenting this here because the majority of what motivates Beta tells (and really a Beta mindset) is rooted in how men deal with a scarcity mentality. Beta tells are almost always indicators that a man believes he needs to guard his paired woman and thus telegraphs a Beta status to that woman as well as other women in her peer clutch.

Mate guarding, and its intrinsic set of subconscious suspicions and behaviors, is an evolved adaptation of ensuring paternity for a Beta-provider. These men must rely upon exchanging resources and external benefits for women’s sexual fidelity. In essence, it’s an unspoken awareness that Beta men must negotiate for what they hope will be a woman’s genuine desire in exchange for his provisioning, parental investment support and emotional involvement.

Beta men are aware on on a limbic level that Hypergamy dictates an Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks trade-off in women’s sexual strategy – thus a subconscious ‘mate guarding’ mindset evolved from Beta men’s heightened awareness of women’s preference for Alpha Fucks particularly around the proliferative phase time of women’s ovulation.

Paradoxically, the best assurance you have of fidelity with a woman is simply not to allow yourself to become exclusively monogamous with a woman and rather, have her make the efforts to pair with you under her own auspices you being Alpha. Romance is not required from a lover a woman perceives as Alpha, only his sexual interest – this represents a confirmation of Hypergamous optimization for a woman. The fuck-buddy dynamic – all sexual interests with no reciprocal expectation of emotional investment  – is a strong Alpha tell for a man.

The best gauge for determining a woman’s perception of you as either an Alpha or Beta type is examining yourself and your feeling a ‘need’ to mate guard her, to appease her, or an impulse to correct yourself in order to align with her terms for intimacy. A scarcity mentality is the mental point of origin for a Beta mindset – and that internalized mental model will manifest itself in a predisposition for Beta behaviors.

There’s a common belief that even the most Alpha of men will at times slip into a Beta behaviorism. You can’t be ‘on’ your game all of the time, and while that’s true it doesn’t invalidate that women have a mental model of your overall, predominant condition being either Alpha or Beta. A predominantly Alpha frame and mindset (and yes, looks), plus an acknowledged (real or perceived) SMV primacy will cover a multitude of Beta sins, but the predominant Beta has the sisyphean task of convincing a woman he’s more Alpha than she pegs him for.

So to answer the man asking whether or not something he did was Beta, your answer really lies in your motivation for behaving ‘Beta’ as you did in comparison to how a woman perceives your predominant character.

 

Malice and Forethought

81456

After the engaging conversation in this week’s comment thread, there’s something I’ve been contemplating and I think it might make for a good weekend discussion.

With regard to this new comfort women have with open Hypergamy now, proudly laying bare their Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks sexual strategy, to the degree that advertising agencies are making blatant commercials about it, I’m starting to think that women hold (or are progressively developing) a subconscious level resentment for those men who would willingly accept her intimately in spite of that foreknowledge.

I realize this reads like a “well, duh Rollo” moment, and I get that a deductive, lesser respect for a Beta man impulse resides in women, but what I’m considering here is this lesser respect in a new, open Hypergamy social context. Whereas before a Beta man might be excused for his ignorance of women’s sexual pluralism (AF/BB) due to women’s secrecy or marginalizing it, now women discover that the Beta men they need to consolidate on in the long term are such hopeless romantics and so sexually optionless that they’ll willfully ignore that open Hypergamy and accept them intimately in spite of it.

It’s an interesting conflict; on one hand the urgency of consolidating on a long term prospect leads her to the Epiphany Phase rationalizations for wanting to do things ‘the right way’ with the Beta provider, but on the other hand, there’s the fact that he accepts his pro-active cuckolding with full knowledge of not just her own prior Alpha ‘indiscretions’, but open Hypergamy on whole.

She needs the guy for provisioning and parental investment impulses, but now the buffer of convincing herself that this Nice guy is simply naive to how Hypergamy functions is gone, thus leaving her more resentful that the type of man she at least figuratively would spend her life with is this pathetic.

Commenter, salemsuwareh had an excellent observation from the last post  that I didn’t want to be lost in the pile:

 I just went to HUS’s article and the explanations given by the women and white knights there actually impressed me because they conveniently demonstrate so many things:

– The most important point is that the whole scenario is defined by the feminine imperative, this point really overrides and defines all others. It’s a form of thought control. If you define what was, what is and what could be according to your imperative then you can make yourself look right. It’s like a way more sophisticated version of 1984’s thought control.

– Women keep chiming in with their stories of how they too enjoy more attention from the other sex now that they’ve fixed some aspect of themselves (and they’ll try to clutch at Stephan doing the same thing to support their argument). What they don’t mention is the difference in SMV between men and women. Women START OUT being arousing to men and go downhill from there. A woman who made herself look better would’ve had at least as much attention when she was younger if she weren’t ugly then.

– Stephan describes himself as not having changed but the women say that is what he has. They are literally conjuring up the idea that Stephan is now more alpha out of thin air.

– They accuse men of doing the same thing women are doing if they can’t make a point or they accuse men of starting it. For example they say MEN who perpetuate the “beta bux” myth. In the next sentence, Susan says that only one of beta bux or post-wall women overestimating their SMV can be true, which coming from her can only be a case of willing, studied ignorance. She’s trying to take pieces out of Rollo’s words and put them against each other but she’s changing the context that the words were made for in the first place, for example – her comparison is false because post-wall women are DEFINED BY (other than visible outer signs ie. fading looks) a realisation that their SMV is under fire, that doesn’t put that in opposition to beta bux, it supports it. By now I’m thinking women have a natural talent for projection and rationalization.

– Men who fear being single like women do are beta men. They are so because a man with options by definition cannot fear being single, since he has options. If you’ve never had any success with women and you’re a plugged-in blue pill, of course you will fear being single! the leaps and haphazard logic she’s making here are just astounding, and that’s before I even begin talking about what she’s implying by saying/implying that men and women have the same problems.

– Susan is selecting the cases that support her point. The two ugly ducklings who find each other at age 28 and live happily ever after.

– Susan talks as if women have no idea what they’re doing with men. If epiphany-phase women are giving signs of being hooked on you, they must genuinely want to fuck you! because women are warm, fuzzy creatures and would never do something like try to push someone’s buttons to get what they want.

– It’s made out like Stephan can turn into a winner if he takes one of these leftover women, or rather that he already IS one because they want him now. They’re trying to prop up his ego to get him to go along with their imperative. Don’t worry Stephan, these girls finally understand that the person they really felt their tingles for was you all along! they were just confused by biker-Rob with the skull tattoo, but I’m all yours now baby.

Overall It’s pretty cool to see the three female weapons as I see them – the anointed trinity of Female Imperative, Rationalization and Projection – in action. They do it so well that you wouldn’t see it for what it is unless you’re familiar with something like Rollo’s blog, which is what’s going on with most men. Unfortunately for these women we have a failsafe, which is to observe what choices women make instead of listening to why they themselves say they make them (assuming she’s a rare woman who holds herself accountable for her own choices, that is).

The problem with convincing Stephan he’s on the right path (of Beta assimilation) is that this feminine-primary advice mistakenly presumes an old order, closed-Hypergamy social paradigm. The ladies at HUS presume Stephan is ignorant of this new-order open Hypergamy (or just initially questioning it), and as with women of their age, they cling to the idea that they can put the Hypergamy genie back in the bottle, reapply his Beta blinders, and thus re-prepare him for a 27-30 year old woman necessitous of his provisioning potential.

This is where their resentment stems from. Any man with the visceral knowledge of women’s dualistic sexual strategy who would still pardon their own participation in it is a man even less respectable than the forgivable Beta without that foreknowledge.

He’s a guy who Just Gets It, yet is so pathetically optionless he willingly chooses to participate in it, since to him the prospect of being manipulated is preferable to the threat of perpetual loneliness; which is the very same threat these women level at him in their advice.

The ‘better’ Beta they think can be built isn’t ego-satisfyingly believable if he’s already aware of and participates in the schadenfreude they have for him.

Moments of Clarity

momentofclarity

Even for the most abject Beta man there comes significant points in his life when he makes a Red Pill connection – a point at which, despite his feminine-primary socialization and for all his own participation in a system that deceives him, his circumstance or a trauma rattles him into a state of clarity.

As I wind my way through the Preventive Medicine timeline in the second draft of the next book I come to understand the periods at which these moments of clarity most commonly occur for Beta men.

Early in life that prompt may be the sting of having a high school sweetheart break up with him before she goes off to college. In or after college it might be the undoing of a long distance relationship he thought for sure his soul-mate would help him dutifully preserve. Later it maybe the realization of how much of his personal potential he truly lost after investing so much in a wife who divorced him and separated him from his children.

Not all of these events are as traumatic as this, but it’s during these Red Pill moments of clarity a man begins to see a hint of the code in the Matrix; a suspicion that maybe what he’s believed about how intergender relations should be really haven’t been directed toward his best interest.

So it was with a certain amount of interest I took notice of a man named Stephen when he petitioned advice from a mouthpiece of the Feminine Imperative this week. Though he doesn’t yet realize it, Stephen is at a Red Pill moment of clarity in his life, and as most Beta men are won’t to do, he seeks answers from the same feminine-primary trough that’s kept him in a state of patient stasis until his yet unrealized potential has now become useful to the Feminine Imperative.

Rather than simply allow the feminine crabs drag him back down into the barrel (until his next Red Pill moment of clarity), I’m going to re-post his plea for understanding here and give him (with the help of my esteemed commenters) the Red Pill truth he deserves at so critical a juncture in his life.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my college dating experiences. I’m 28 years old now and I’ve noticed a very odd phenomenon lately. I’m getting noticed (and approached) by women that never would’ve given me the time of day when I was in college. Successful, accomplished women! One in particular is incredibly hot, but they all are attractive. I am baffled by this. You may laugh, but this is making me extremely frustrated and stressed out.

Reading your blog has offered some explanations. I’m an analytical guy, so I’ve been very impressed with the social science you weave into your writing, and the research about how 28 is the ideal male age for women helped to explain what might be going on. But I still can’t figure out what’s going on, with me or with them. I feel emotions like resentment and suspicion, as well as desire, but I’m not at all flattered. I find myself unable to respond in any way, positively or negatively. I feel paralyzed.

Sometimes I think I’m just offended. These are the very same women who rejected me time and again in college. I mean, I know they’re not the same but…they’re the same. I wanted relationships (I tried casual sex…EPIC FAIL), they didn’t want me. My one serious college girlfriend cheated on me with her professor. I was really, really hurt, felt like a chump, etc. 
To put it in a HUS context, the [college girls] preferred alpha males (I’m definitely a beta, introverted, overly intense, with a baby face.) Or maybe they were reluctant to get involved during college because they wanted to be free to move on after graduation and not be tied down.

The thing is, I don’t think I’ve changed all that much. Frankly, I couldn’t change if I wanted to, even if it meant getting these women. I may have come out of my shell a little, but I honestly don’t think it’s me that’s different. It’s them, and I don’t think I like the difference. I think I’m the consolation prize. I think they still want the alphas but they’ve given up. Time to settle. I’m offended. I don’t trust these women.

Am I too proud? Getting my revenge? Guarded from past humiliations? Or have I just grown up and learned from my experiences?

Stephen

Stephen, the moment of Red Pill clarity you’re now experiencing is coming from your newly realized status. The women you describe being attracted to you (different than being aroused by you) are entering what I call The Epiphany Phase – the point at which their sexual market value begins to decay in earnest while a man’s begins his greatest potential to capitalize upon his own SMV as it steadily (should) increase.

This is a precarious time for women, usually the years between 28 and 30, where she makes attempts to reassess the last decade of her life. Women’s psychological rationalization engine (a.k.a. the Hamster) begins a furious effort to account for, and explain her reasonings for not having successfully secured a long term monogamous commitment from as Alpha a man as her attractiveness could attain for her. Even women married prior to this phase will go through some variation of self-doubt, or self-pity in dealing with the hypergamic uncertainty of her choice of husband (“Is he really the best I could do?”)

It’s during this stage that women will make radical shifts in the prioritization of what prerequisite traits qualify as ‘attractive’ in a man and attempt to turn over a new leaf by changing up their behaviors to align with this new persona they create for themselves. Since the physicality, sexual prowess and Alpha dominance that made up her former arousal cues in a Man aren’t as forthcoming from men as when she was in her sexual prime, she reprioritizes them with (presumed) preferences for more intrinsic male attributes that stress dependability, provisioning capacity, humor, intellect, and esoteric definitions of compatibility and intimacy.

Where you find yourself now, Stephen, is in the midst of these women coming to terms with their waning SMV and the increasing effort it takes women of that age bracket to effectively compete in a sexual marketplace where younger women simply outclass them with every new year that she doesn’t consolidate on a man who represents a good long term provisioning prospect.

As you suggest, these are the same women who found you sexually invisible when they were younger and enjoying the same SMV peak with the relatively more Alpha men they wanted to have short term sexual experiences with. These women were the younger competition they now find threatening their sexual selection today.

Are they exactly the same individual women? I don’t know for sure from your outline, but even if they aren’t, the Schedules of Mating script women follow is so common and predictable that they may as well effectively be the same women to you – and this is precisely what your subconscious instinct is attempting to relate to your conscious-self now.

…I honestly don’t think it’s me that’s different. It’s them, and I don’t think I like the difference.

Unless you’ve made a drastic improvement to your physical appearance or you’ve become more Game aware and have changed your intersexual outlook and behavior the obvious answer is, it is these women who’ve changed.

Now the question remains, why?

What has changed in these women’s lives that prompted this dramatic shift in how they’ve re-prioritized what they now find sexually acceptable? What is it about you in the now (and not back then) that makes you ideal for that acceptability?

Aunt Giggles wants to convince you to let bygones be bygones and follow along with the script the Feminine Imperative expects of you by shaming you for not forgiving a woman of her past indiscretions…

No doubt the girls at college rewarded the males who were early developers and exhibited masculine qualities then. Why take that personally?

I’ll tell you why, because the men they were interested in short term sexual prospects with then weren’t being asked to make anything resembling the life changing personal investment in these ‘reformed’ women she hopes you’ll man-up and be a ‘Better Beta’ for. Those men got the milk for free because the cow milked herself and gave it to them, gladly.

Now that’s a hell of a proposition for a guy who’s played by what his prior feminine conditioning would have him believe were the ‘rules’ for as long as you have. Is it really that far a stretch to want to protect the investment of your personal potential, not to mention your yet unrealized peak SMV potential, with women who now hope you’ll be sex, love and desire starved enough for the past 10 or so years to look past all the short term sex they had with more Alpha men in the Party Years of their early to mid 20s?

Maturation of Beta Bucks

Aunt Sue has always ridden the fence when it comes to acknowledging the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks nature of women’s sexual strategy. When it suits her narrative she agrees with Hypergamy, when it doesn’t, well, you’ll never know because those posts get scrubbed from her blog.

Fortunately you don’t need her input on Hypergamy to understand women’s pluralistic sexual strategy – there are many, much higher profile women than Susan Walsh who openly and publicly endorse exactly the strategy these women (who are suddenly attracted to you now) are using:

“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.”

― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

And since we’re interested in the research perhaps we can ask Aunt Sue why it is nearly half of women in relationships retain a ‘Plan B’ guy:

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.”

You see Stephen, it’s not those “Red Pill, Dark Triad cads” who perpetuate the “Beta Bux” theory; we don’t need to, it’s modern women who proudly, triumphantly, openly confirm their own Hypergamy and blatantly expect you to comply with it by default. In fact they’ll shame you, as all the commenters on HUS are doing now, for even questioning your expected role in affirming their sexual strategy.

So, with the knowledge of this new Red Pill truth, openly confirmed by the very same women who are ‘attracted’ to you now, how do you intend to benefit from it? Will you stick your head back in the blue pill sand of HUS, or will you become curious about the broader truths of the Red Pill. Just remember, now you’re aware of a Red Pill truth, there’s no going back.

However, bear in mind, you’re 28, the women you’re dealing with now have had a lot longer than just the 4 years they may have spent in high school to decide if you were attractive to them – these women have had the better part of the past 10 years and the benefit of experiencing the peak of their SMV potential up to this point in life.

Aunt Giggles’ would have you believe your new found SMV is the result some maturation process or change in your personal conditions when in fact it’s the very calculated result of an proudly confirmed, pre-designed sexual strategy. And it becomes really insidious when the operative feminine social convention in play accuses you of wanting “revenge” for acknowledging the same strategy that these women do openly already; you could be cowed into the fear of remaining alone, but that’s a myth to bust in another post.

Commenters, perhaps I’ve missed something here.

Please, feel free to post your advice for Stephen in the always open, never moderated and entirely uncensored comment section only here at The Rational Male.

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.

Yes Means Fear

Not surprisingly the latest “anti-rape” Yes Means Yes law just passed for California university campuses has been the topic du jour in the manosphere this week. I usually like to allow mainstream news like this to percolate in the ‘sphere before throwing my hat into the ring, but I think it’s gotten a lot of mulling over on various blogs now.

Just as a point of order, I’ll repeat that as a policy I never do politics, religion or race on Rational Male – unless those topics relate to intergender relations or the interests of red pill truths and/or the manosphere in general.

That said it’s impossible not to consider the politics, social perspective and the underlying motivations of this new law. Dalrock has already done three posts to this effect, and I wouldn’t want to take any of that thunder away from him. So if you’re wanting a more in depth social / religious perspective I suggest heading over there and read his last posts.

For the most part Dal dissects the Ezra Klein article Roosh vlogs about here regarding how terrible, but ‘necessarily terrible’ this new law is. I’m not sure what I could add here that hasn’t already been debated with regard to speculating about its long term effects, however I do think this law is less about rape prevention, or even the redefining of ‘what rape is” and a lot more about the need for total control of both the male sexual imperative and optimal feminine hypergamy.

Although Yes Means Yes is law on California University campuses it is merely the first of many coming mandates with the latent purpose of legally mandating men’s cooperation with feminine hypergamy and women’s sexual pluralism (AFBB).

I could elaborate on the details of how Yes Means Yes is essentially worthless without some metric by which to document ‘consent’ at each stage of an intersexual encounter (yes, it’s in the law), but this would be pointless, because the actual intent of this law is to create an environment where men are led into a false sense of security with a woman as they move from stage to stage.

The Yes Means Yes law could also be called the You Better Be Pretty Damn Sure law. You Better Be Pretty Damn Sure she said yes. You Better Be Pretty Damn Sure she meant to say yes, and wasn’t consenting because she was scared, or high, or too tired of fighting. If you’re one half of a loving, committed relationship, then you probably can Be Pretty Damn Sure. If you’re not, then you better fucking ask.

The problem with Ezra’s scenario here is he’s presuming a baseline of two honest agents with each other’s mutual interest at heart, in rational discourse between both men and women in a “loving relationship” with no ulterior motives either in the now or in the future. Being ‘Pretty Damn Sure’ is not enough and that’s what makes YMY so dangerous. It presumes male guilt before, during and after any sex ever occurs, and Ezra knows this…

…men need to feel a cold spike of fear when they begin a sexual encounter.

Sadie Hawkins’ World

And thus we understand the latent purpose of this law – instilling fear in men. Nominally the law is about making men so fearful that they concede all aspects of any intersexual discourse to a feminine imperative. This is Sadie Hawkins’ world. One in which only women are allowed to make any intersexual approach to a man for fear that his doing so will be construed as rape, or an intent to rape, even before he initiates anything.

The goal of feminism is to remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality – Heartiste

The more a feminine-primary social order embraces, endorses and openly promotes feminine hypergamy as the normative, correct, social paradigm, the more it will be necessary to legally force men to comply with it.

As it stands now, the Feminine Imperative is having an increasingly difficult time enforcing its primacy through social conventions and popular culture shaming men into compliance with it. Increasingly men are becoming aware of the raw duplicity of open hypergamy and are becoming less and less cooperative with what really amounts to their participation in their own hypergamous cuckoldry – which women triumphantly crow about in as public a manner as is practical now.

A common refrain from the manosphere has been that the only reason a man should consider marriage is if he wanted to raise children – a functioning, cooperative, child-rearing environment being the only evident ‘advantage’ marriage offers men – but in light of potentially more laws cut from this cloth and the glaringly evident risks of having his children legally removed from him under the flimsiest of pretenses I can’t say as I agree with this anymore.

In Sadie Hawkins’ world there are no “advantages” for men in marriage – only liabilities enforced by fear.

It’s no longer about buying the cow when you can get the milk for free anymore. It’s about the cow milking itself and giving it away to Alpha Fucks in its peak years and then expecting you to buy her just before she’s gone completely dry. And all under the assumed risk of accusations of nonconsensual sex at her disposal should you choose not to comply at any time.

The latent purpose of Yes Means Yes is to lock feminine hypergamy into a legal mandate while ensuring fear (I should say Dread) is the motivator for men’s compliance in it.

Brave New Hypergamy

Deti is a permanent fixture in the manosphere, and though he doesn’t have his own blog, he regularly hit’s ’em out of the park with his comments here and on various other blogs.

Deti on Dalrock:

Proponents of “Yes means yes” also are Game deniers and Game haters. The funny thing is that this law will only increase Game and swell the prevalence of its practitioners. Jerks, players, and cads will be the only ones with the balls and the resolve to press forward. Less adept men will give up, because they cannot run the risks of an encounter going bad. They can’t risk criminal records, loss of jobs, loss of family, loss of money and time. The risks aren’t worth the puny rewards.

What marriage is now is what social interaction between men and women will become – a man merely looking at a girl too long will bring a complaint to police, and a man will have to answer merely for his gaze. He could be fined or even imprisoned.

The proponents of Yes means Yes think it will reduce Game and assault; will remove the ambiguities. they think it will foster and encourage the growth, development and proliferation of healthy relationships and marriages. They think it will create safer places for women to seek relationships (or not). It will do none of these things.

“Yes means yes” will only increase Game because the only men willing to try will be those with proven successful sexual track records. It will only create more ambiguity. It will only cause more “good men” and providers to drop out or hoard their earnings, refusing to put them to the service of women. It will leave only the jerks, thugs, cads and players in the SMP as the only men willing to navigate the sexual minefield. These men won’t marry because they don’t have to. The men who would be willing to marry won’t be in the marketplace because they dropped out, and they won’t prepare to marry in the first place because they never got the signals to prepare for it and there’s no point in trying anyway. Marriage rates will continue sliding; the age at first marriage for men and women will continue inching up.

Women will continue to get pumped and dumped. The unhappy ones, ones who regret the encounters or they didn’t go exactly as hoped or planned, will quickly and quietly drop their “lack of consent” claims when video recordings of the encounters in question surface, together with smiling photos and confirmatory texts. A few such women and their institutions of higher learning will be defendants in defamation lawsuits. Some of those videos will make their way to the internet; most won’t.

Welcome to our brave new sexual world. I think that our interlocutors really ought to think this all the way through before supporting it and deciding this is what they want.

There’s an idea that the work around to Yes Means Yes is simply to have sex with a girl off campus. Ergo the incidence of “campus rape” declines and the law is spun as a victory for feminists and evidence of a successful enactment of a functional law.

Yes Means Yes will be a ‘success’ insofar as it curbs campus rape because it is uniquely based on male fear. Again, from Klein’s piece:

To work, “Yes Means Yes” needs to create a world where men are afraid.

Read this again, “…to create a WORLD where men are afraid.”

Ezra believes this ‘useful fear’ is a horrible-but-necessary tool with which to fight what ever definition of rape he subscribes to, but what he doesn’t realize is that fear has uses and implications which go well beyond rape prevention.

The ‘big deal’ is the latent purpose of the law and the motivating ideologies behind it. The law won’t actually curb rape, but it will be successful in creating a world where men are afraid by ambiguously and progressively redefining what rape is and what harassment should encompass – all while legally enforcing men’s compliance in feminine hypergamy.

It’s just as easy to say, ‘well, men will simply not cooperate and go their own way”, and while that would certainly predicate what Deti is proposing, the most salient part is that this law has already successfully changed the gender landscape to one based on fear of the Feminine Imperative. For all my female critics decrying my advocating men use Dread (or at least not discouraging it passively) in their relationships, you can see here in stark contrast that it is overwhelmingly the feminine which is not only comfortable in using dread, but openly mandating legal assurances of its use.

The Feminine Imperative is so fixated upon the insecurities inherent to women’s individual capacity to optimize their hypergamy, so entitled are women to an Alpha Fucks and Beta Bucks sexual strategy, it will enact legal mandates to ensure that optimization.

Fem-Centrism

When I wrote Fem-Centrism and The Feminine Reality, I took a lot of shit for being a conspiracist in making the assertions I made:

…the feminine imperative is normalized as the CORRECT goal of any conflict. A woman’s existential imperative, her happiness, her contentment, her protection, her provisioning, her empowerment, literally anything that benefits the feminine is not only encouraged socially, but in most cases mandated by law. Ironically, most doctors require a wife’s written consent to perform a vasectomy on a married man; not because of a legal mandate, but rather to avoid legal retaliations and damages from a wife. By hook or by crook, her imperative is the CORRECT one.

Doesn’t sound so crazy now does it?

A few other things to consider; just this week we’ve seen companies like FaceBook and Apple offer a female-only benefit of freezing women’s eggs for future insemination to its potential female employees. On the face this perk is intended to attract ‘professional’ women to the tech field by assuring them they can eventually “have it all” – once they’ve conquered the “male-dominated work world®”.

While that may help assuage the bad PR the tech industry has with finding any women to work for them, the latent purpose is still ensuring feminine hypergamy and the goals of a female-primary social order can be fulfilled, regardless of how realistic those expectations are.

Also consider my favorite whipping girl Emma Watson’s appeal to the United Nations a few weeks ago initiates a campaign which asks men to take “The HeForShe Commitment” pledge: “Gender equality is not only a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that requires my participation. I commit to take action against all forms of violence and discrimination faced by women and girls.” This essentially distills to the common “lets you and him fight” convention women will use, but in this instance it amounts to a plea for Feminine Imperative compliant men to police the actions of noncompliant men.

When we consider these two recent developments along with the Yes Means Yes law, the veneer of the Feminine Imperative’s purpose comes off in ways which make it recognizable as the driving social paradigm of our time. The more that control is made obvious, the more a need for legal enforcement and male compliance will be necessary as societal efforts to enforce it break down.