sexual practices

The Surrogate Boyfriend

From a soon-to-be-unplugged 30Darren from the SoSuave forum:

I made a big mistake and got involved with a coworker. We dated for a little about a year ago but it never went far. Never slept with her. We became close friends though. We would hang out, Go to movie, Get dinner go for drinks and just hang out. We always talked even late with text and everything. I liked her a lot and she seemed comfortable with me.

I guess i felt i always had a chance with her because when we hung out she always flirted with me and having sex with each other seemed to be the topic we most talked about. She even mentioned shooting a porno with me. I don’t know if it was just mind games or if she was serious. Right now i don’t know what i was thinking, i should of let actions speak louder than words. But i really felt for her so i grasped on anything that made me feel like she was interested in me. This went on for about 8 months.

We had up and downs. I’m not completely stupid, there were times where i was trying to leave her alone and let each other move on but then she would get this increased interest in me and id fall back in line. I would leave her alone when she would have her little flings but eventually she would gravitate towards me again.

This week was a crazy week though. We went out had she took something i said completely the wrong way. We decided to give each other space (which i did) but then she was all over again when i gave her no attention. She started telling everyone i was her best-friend and then when we went out for drinks with co-workers she started calling me her Man. I didn’t play into and give that too much attention because i felt it wasn’t real. Two days later she is completely ready to end it with me. Said she was blocking my number from her phone and to not expect to hear from her again. she said it was “time for her to spend energy talking to a guy she actually likes more than just friends and that she’s not attracted to me and cant force herself to be, good-bye”. Ill admit. That really hurt. So abrupt and harsh. And remember i work with her.. What am i to do and how do i act. Is it a power game or is this is.

Women have Girlfriends and Boyfriends. If you’re not fucking her, you’re her Girlfriend.

One of the more heinous crimes inflicted upon the men of Generation AFC is the curse of the Emotional Tampon. Hapless Betas being cast into the role of perpetually having to be “supportive” and emotionally available for a woman he’s enamored with all in an effort to prove himself the ideal boyfriend is an 80’s Brat Pack movie plot cliché now. Oh, if only she could see past the hot jock jerks and find the true love that’s been here all along,…swoon,…

Typically when I read classics like this it’s on the high school forum at SoSuave, and for good reason; usually all it takes is one or two passes at this experience for young men to come to an understanding that they’re being manipulated. As we progress through adolescence and into early adulthood (if all goes as it should) there are a series of valuable learning experiences that teach us (albeit harshly) a mature adult set of social skills. This is generally where I begin when I assess particular intergender situations – are the participants using an adolescent social skill set? Has some factor retarded this maturation (such as premature monogamy, or a stubborn clinging to Disneyesque ideals) into an adult social skill set?

What makes Darren’s situation interesting is the pseudo-relationship he’s entertained with this girl for 8 months. For all the shit slinging about Three Strikes or the sex never being worth the wait for a Wait for It girl, it amazes me how readily and willing a majority of Beta men will be to entertain a sexless, quasi-monogamy. I’d like to blame the girl for her playing along, but I can’t – she’s only doing what women do when they pursue their pluralistic mating strategy. Don’t blame the Doberman for eating the juicy steak. It’s Darren’s failure to consolidate, and consolidate early, on ratcheting up his sexual interest in the girl that’s the primary issue.

In addition, Darren still doesn’t want to acknowledge that he never had a relationship with her, instead wondering if her ‘abrupt'(?) rejection is some kind of power game, and hoping against hope that he can salvage a monogamy that only existed in his head. What his part really amounts to is a Buffer against the very real rejection he could potentially experience by putting himself out into the real world by spinning plates. The longer her perpetuates his pseudo-relationship, the longer he forestalls having to face potential rejection.

The Surrogate

Darren was playing surrogate boyfriend, voluntarily accepting and internalizing all of the responsibilities and accountabilities of being a woman’s exclusive, monogamous partner with no expectation of reciprocating intimacy or sexuality. It is the ideal situation for a woman in the same manner a Booty Call is for a man – all sex with no expectations of monogamy, commitment or emotional investment.

You essentially become a surrogate boyfriend for her – fulfilling all the emotional availability and security needs the Jerk isn’t providing with no expectation of reciprocating intimacy on her part.

How Cruel?

From the standpoint of a guy who’s aware he’s become a surrogate boyfriend, and those who can objectively see that he is, it seem incredibly manipulative and deliberate for a woman to put a guy whom she knows has a definite interest level for her into that role. I would argue that, more often than not, a woman doing so has done so repeatedly in the past so often that it becomes normalized for her.

Is she aware of it?

On some level of consciousness perhaps, but it’s comfortable for her to do so because she’s unable to have both her emotional / security needs paired with her physical needs in the same guy. So her coping mechanism is to entertain a Nice Guy (sometimes multiple Nice Guys) from whom she gets emotional support and a security response from, while wallowing in the physical rush and the resulting drama caused by the Jerk. I go into this splitting of needs in Schedules of Mating:

There are methods and social contrivances women have used for centuries to ensure that the best male’s genes are selected and secured with the best male provisioning she’s capable of attracting. Ideally the best Man should exemplify both, but rarely do the two exist in the same male (particularly these days) so in the interest of achieving her biological imperative, and prompted by an innate need for security, the feminine as a whole had to develop social conventions and methodologies (which change as her environment and personal conditions do) to effect this.

Maintaining a series of surrogate boyfriends is one of the most directly observable manifestations of women sexual pluralism.

Women get off on perfecting a gestalt boyfriend from both the Nice Guy and the Jerk, but relatively few are aware of it, and among those who are, even fewer will expressly admit to it. They’ll quite happily allow a surrogate to continue in his qualifying himself to her in his efforts to “be a good listener” and “be there for her” until such a time as he grows frustrated and he becomes a liability in his own right, or a liability to her Jerk sex / drama interest. The hot guy who uses her up and leaves her on the bed wanting more will always take precedence over the emotional surrogate because they’re so easily attracted and entertained.

Plate Theory V: Lady’s Game

I had a good amount of response on last Friday’s Plate Theory post asking for a more complete idea of women being natural Plate Theorists, so I thought I’d elaborate on this.

Female Plate Theory

For as often as I’ve mentioned women being natural plate theorists, I don’t think I’ve ever gone into detail about it. I think it’s pretty well established that I completely disagree with idea that women will only fuck one guy at a time. I could outline several women I know from experience in this, but really, observing behavior will bear this out fairly predictably. I will however agree that they are predisposed to, and are socially encouraged to, seek monogamy, but as in all things female the talk rarely matches the behavior. Sexuality is a woman’s first, best agency and even the homeliest woman know this – even when they’re just complaining about other women using it.

The principle that a woman’s first priority is to seek out security is true, and we’d be wise to bear this in mind when evaluating motives for behavior, but their methodology is what’s in question here. There is an understandable confusion for guys in this respect. On one hand women present a constant facade that the fear of being perceived as a slut (i.e. concurrently fucking more than one guy at a time) is primary to their self-respect and respectability. However, this has to be tempered with the desire to experience a variety of men in order to ensure the security/provisioning from the best among them. So in order to facilitate this women must practice a kind of calculated hypocrisy that is socially reinforced by the gender as a whole as well as some men (usually those so optionless as to excuse the behavior in order to get to her sexuality, or guys so conditioned that they overlook it as normal).

It is socially acceptable for a woman to blatantly spin plates.

Does this sound outrageous? While a woman who makes her sexual practices a bit too overt runs the risk of being perceived as a slut (which is dubious in this age as it is), most relatively attractive women covertly have a constant bullpen of starters ready to go to bat at any one time – these are also known as ‘Orbiters’. These are the attention providers, the “maybe” guys. And it makes little difference in terms of available options which she chooses at any given time, the very fact that she has five or six of them pursuing her is enough to boost her sense of self-worth, her social status within her same-gender peers, and give her the confidence to drop any one of her plates at a moments notice for any reason knowing that 2 or 3 more guys (or 20 more on facebook) stand ready to take his place, no questions asked and prepared rationalizations at the ready.

In addition, this practice is socially reinforced by women doing the same thing and the social conventions constructed to excuse the behavior. It’s the unspoken rule of a woman’s prerogative; she can always change her mind. This is a powerful tool for women –  in any situation, if a woman doesn’t choose to be sexual it is necessarily forced (or obligated), even when it’s after the fact. Either the “Jerk” forced her, physically or emotionally, or she had thought she wanted to, but later reconsidered – it makes little difference. In all social situations the default is to side with the feminine, the “weaker sex” – women, from sympathy or empathy, and men, from a desire to eventually become intimate with them. Dalrock expertly describes this convention in his “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” post.

In either instance, the feminine prerogative is socially reinforced. That’s important to understand because even by my focusing on it here as a male, my motives for doing so become suspect. That’s how embedded this dynamic is – to question it risks ostracization. However, I also understand that for the greater part of women, this plate spinning dynamic isn’t a conscious effort on their part. In fact I’d suggest that it’s so thoroughly recognized that women default to it autonomously. Also, this is a good example of the first principle of power – when you have power, always feign powerlessness.

Free Reign

So, with a firm understanding that their behaviors will for the most part be excused, they are free to practice the feminine form of plate theory unhindered by social reprisal. The feminine plate spinning involves much more than sex though. Remember that attention is the coin of the realm in female society. The capacity to command attention determines self-esteem, peer status, sexual selectivity, and a host of other factors in a woman’s life, so spinning plates becomes more than just a “which guy am I gonna bang tonight” prospect. This dynamic and these factors are what makes women natural plate spinners. Even when a woman has no intention of ever becoming sexual with a “maybe” guy, his attention still has some value to her. It appeals to the long term prospective for security that’s a continuous subroutine running in her hindbrain. This is the rudimentary psychology behind hypergamy.

Now, combine all of this with women’s native language – covert communication – and it’s natural for a man to assume that a woman will only ever become sexual with one guy at a time. This serves the latent purpose of keeping him in a kind of stasis. If he assumes women will only be sexual under the precondition of commitment she is free to spin plates (essentially weighing options) as she pleases and sample at will what she sees as in her hypergamic best interest at the time. If the carrot looks good enough the guy will patiently pull the cart until such time as another, better carrot comes along. Either way he’s in that stasis. If a guy were to see her social and psychological machinations for what they are, he’d never pull the cart – so it serves women best that men think commitment should always be required for intimacy, even in the face of her behavior directly contradicting this.

Plate Wars

Lastly, this social dynamic serves as a very effective weapon for women against each other. As I stated in the last Plate Theory post, competition anxiety between women is something men can exploit for their own plate spinning, but the reason it is useful is because women so readily use it against each other. For a woman to say another is a “slut” translates into an overt betrayal of this unspoken social contrivance. She essentially is saying, “the rules are that women require commitment for sex, but here’s one who’ll never be worthy of any guy’s commitment because she wont play by the rules you suckers think she will.”

She is tacitly disqualified for a man’s commitment and is, at least in the accusing woman’s mind, a reduced threat in this feminine competition. She becomes exposed in the same game they’re all playing and in being so loses attention and therefore status and personal esteem. It seems petty to guys, but it’s really intra-gender warfare. Think of how many times an exceptionally attractive woman, that is completely anonymous to a group of women you happen to be with, berate her based on appearance alone. “She’s must be a tramp if she dressed like that.” These are the same women who’ll berate a man for basing his estimation of a woman on her outer appearance. This is feminine competition anxiety. Ask a woman to name the most attractive female actress they can think of. Odds are it will be a woman (who as a guy you’d never think of) who presents the least threat of this anxiety.

Gentlemen, as I’m fond of saying, women will fuck. They may not fuck you, they may not fuck me, but they will fuck someone. The girl who bangs the hot guy at the foam party in Cancun on Spring Break within 5 minutes of meeting him is the same girl who want’s you to believe that they’ll only fuck one guy at a time and then after commitment. All women are sexual, you just need to be the right guy at the right time for the job.