sosuave

Transactional vs. Validational Sex

You cannot negotiate genuine desire.

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

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

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

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

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

Hormonal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Validational Sex

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

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

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

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

Transactional Sex

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

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

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

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

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

Unnegotiated Desire

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

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

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

The Red Pill Monthly – Frame

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

 

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

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

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

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

Iron Rule of Tomassi #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

rollo_t

Strength of Interest

10407975_880067355398915_2343533858160698952_n

I had a couple of questions from the SoSuave Forum‘s (yes, I’m still a mod there) Judge Nismo I thought I’d take a crack at:

G’ morning Rollo. I got a couple questions for you that I don’t think you touched on in your book…or I may have overlooked.

1. What is your opinion on the Celebrity Maxim?

That is, I know you see it a lot in your Rational Male comments and on this board (i.e. Would she flake out on Brad Pitt? Would she make George Clooney wait for sex? She wouldn’t confuse Channing Tatum, etc.) I’ve even used it a lot on here, usually saying you wouldn’t fall asleep if you had a date with Katy Perry, and you wouldn’t pull a last minute flake text with Kate Upton, and you wouldn’t have to babysit if you had Shakira ready to bang!

If there’s three things I’ve learned from writing in the Manosphere for the past 12 years it’s this; no matter how apt, never use an allegory to illustrate a point, never try to relate a fictional story, movie or character to a real world dynamic and never hold up famous celebrities as common reference examples of broader, mundane dynamics.

The temptation to do so stems from a want for a common point of reference. However, appealing to a highly recognizable exemplar of a dynamic only makes picking apart the known particulars about that individual a priority – not on really grasping the dynamic itself.

I see this in the ‘sphere occasionally, and I’d be lying if I said I’d never committed these sins myself. For the most part, and certainly as far as my own readership goes, I think many of the best writers and the commentariat of the ‘sphere are very intelligent men. That’s not to account for the occasional troll, but I’ve found that even an OCD troll still needs to be clever in the ‘sphere.

That said, it’s just this preponderance of intelligence that makes men take illustrative examples as face value facts. Using celebrities as examples of commonality in purpose just smacks of the Apex Fallacy.

“….the Apex fallacy is the idea that we assign the characteristics of the highest visibility members of a group to all members of that group.”

If you’re at all familiar with the controversy surrounding the Apex Fallacy, feminists and manginas alike decided to commandeer wikipedia to paste this as a Men’s Rights misappropriation of the definition, but in actuality the true definition cuts both ways. So while women misappropriate the highest visibility men to associate a totality of the “patriarchy”, men, on the other hand, misappropriate the highest echelon men with examples of common inference of a dynamic.

In English, those celebs aren’t you or me or any layperson you deal with daily. I get the inference of course, and the message is usually one about incentives being strong enough to prompt behaviors. However, what Nismo is getting at is really less about the validity of those illustrations and more about genuine desire:

I ask since it’s quite a big trope in the manosphere…

2. What is your take on the one strike rule?

You do have a 3 strikes article on Rational Male, and I did read it. On this board, it’s quite common to see situations with chicks go like this:

– She flaked on me, she is deleted.
– She stopped responding to my texts and calls, automatic out.
– She wants to bring some friends along, sorry this is one on one.

I could go on and on, most of these situations often get read by red pill men as low interest, thus move on or become a beta orbiter. Yes, I do online dating and work 2 jobs, but I do have a one strike policy.

Sure, sometimes life will truly get in the way, but most men who are red pill will likely move on if there’s low interest. We all know not to waste time with uninterested chicks because they won’t put out. Heck, the sick excuse is often times a blow off, and lately, death in the family has been disguised as blowing someone off.

Zero Tolerance

The problem most men have with a Zero Tolerance policy is that you’re not George Clooney and you’re not Brad Pitt, but moreover, most men still cling to Blue Pill idealisms and the conditioned hope that women will see the “real” men they think women have a magical sensitivity to detect. Thus, they play by the script and hold out for the real desire they believe women should have a capacity for with them.

This is why Blue Pill men get angry at the 3-Strikes rule; that scarcity mentality colors their interaction with women to the point that anything counter to playing the patient, devoted, “prove-my-quality” white knightery role invalidates everything they’ve sacrificed and waited so patiently for up to that point.

They’re afraid of throwing the baby out with the bath water, and damn it, if you suggest doing anything other than what makes their patience worthwhile you’re a misogynistic prick.

If these men could pause with any insight they’d understand that any threshold – one strike, three strikes – suggested by myself or the manosphere isn’t about punishing a woman’s indecisiveness, but rather a pragmatic vetting meant to be efficient for men. That tolerance policy is about conservation of resources and time, not so much retribution (though I’me sure some men entertain that).

  • She flakes on you with no counter offer or marginal reframe? –
    Message: Insufficient interest
  • Stops responding to communications (and possibly resumes after a period)? – The Medium is the Message
  • Wants to bring friends along to a date? –
    Message: you are a rich resource to be exploited, or her interest is so low that she foresees a need to bring friends along to make her date with you entertaining.

The Prince with Interest

What Nismo is comparing here is really an evaluation of interest a woman has in you. I’ve gone into this in the past:

Women with high interest level (IL) wont confuse you. When a woman wants to fuck you she’ll find a way to fuck you. If she’s fluctuating between being into you and then not, put her away for a while and spin other plates. If she sorts it out for herself and pursues you, then you are still playing in your frame and you maintain the value of your attention to her. It’s when you patiently while away your time wondering what the magic formula is that’ll bring her around, that’s when you lean over into her frame. You need her more than she needs you and she will dictate the terms of her attentions.

From an evolutionary perspective Hypergamy can’t afford to wait once a woman’s filtering mechanism is satisfied that a man passes for an Alpha. Women will break rules for Alpha men and create more rules for Beta men to have access to her. Keep in mind that first part; women will make access easy for a man she perceives as an SMV superior. Hypergamy always seeks a better-than deserved SMV benefit.

So to use the apex example, no, a woman can’t afford to confuse Channing Tatum. Mix in the behavioral influences a woman’s ovulatory chemistry predisposes her to with that SMV+ benefit perception and you’ve got dilated pupils, seductive ornamentation, lower vocal intonations and an elevated heart rate – Estrus.

As you might guess, this poses a problem for most guys because, lets face it, most of us aren’t examples of this apex. Even when we make dramatic leaps in self-improvement and physical transformation it’s hard to shake our former self-impressions and our previous degrees of self-confidence.

Back in the early days of SoSuave there was a concept we’d use that I think had a lot of merit – the concept of the Prince. For many men just coming into a Red Pill awareness meant re-imagining oneself in a new, more intrinsically valued light.

For instance, after you understand the basic psychology of why a technique like Cocky & Funny or Amused Mastery works with women, personally applying those dynamics requires a man to view himself in a more valuable context.

As I said, Hypergamy always seeks a better-than deserved SMV benefit, so it follows that a man should at least reconsider himself as that “better-than her SMV” prospect. Irrespective of that being a reality or not, the idea is a sound one. In fact it’s a law of power:

Law 25 – Re-Create Yourself

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you.  Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience.  Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

And also:

Law 34 – Be Royal in your Own Fashion:  Act like a King to be treated like one

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you.  For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others.  By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

In Amused Mastery, it helps to actually have some context of mastery to source as amusement.

Needless to say, asking a former Blue Pill Beta to simultaneously digest a new Red Pill awareness and revalue his self-worth is a pretty tall order. As I mention in Rejection & Revenge as a man, your existence will be defined by how you deal with rejection, so for a majority of men who’ve been hammered flat for the better part of a lifetime by women’s rejection telling him to adopt the mindset of a Prince is alien to him.

Furthermore, much of his feminine-conditioned self-perception has always taught him to be self-conscious and respectful of women’s default authority. It’s part of men’s previous Beta Game to want to identify with the feminine in order to prove how alike a man is with a woman. This conditioning is really a plan to force compliance to women’s sexual strategy from men, but it’s sold on the belief that being more feminine-like, feminine-sensitive, will set a Beta man apart from other brutish men who aren’t.

When you consider his previous degree of ego-investment in his conditioning, you can get a real appreciation of the unlearning a Red Pill man must do. It’s very difficult for most guys to consider themselves a Prince when they’ve been taught reverent deference to women all their lives.

Qualities of The Prince(ss)

A Prince’s time is valuable. His efforts and attention are gifts he bestows on the woman he’s interested in, and as such that woman’s esteem should be validated by it. She is envied by other women because of the Prince’s interest in her; it confirms there is something about her that sets her apart from other women. Her role becomes one of both humbling gratitude and excited, almost childlike, anticipations of him.

If that comes off like a pipe dream or a fake-it-till-you-make-it motivational screed, it’s because most men are so inured by a lifetime conditioning designed to hold them in the role of expectant, reverent, and deferring lover if they can perform to a woman’s standards. So ingrained is that subservience that a Princess’ acceptance of a man is exalted to an appreciation of spiritual, metaphysical, significance. God ordained her acceptance of him, the fates conspired or he “just got lucky”.

Beta men, in their Blue Pill expectations of women being rational agents, are often dumbfounded by the woman who compulsively returns over and over again to the Alpha ‘asshole’ who doesn’t respect, appreciate and love her like she deserves – like he would if she’d just come to her senses. We call that guy the emotional tampon, but what he doesn’t get is that the woman he’s orbiting is locked in a cycle that only a man with an SMV above her own can induce.

Even if that valuation is just perceptual, a woman’s Hypergamous optimization efforts will predispose her to wanting to lock that man down. This is the danger of relying on apex examples of a dynamic – women must still operate within their respective frames and within their capacity to accurately evaluate the SMV of the men she can realistically attract.

That semi-abusive Jerk boyfriend she loves so much? He’s not Channing Tatum or Brad Pitt, but contextually he’s the guy with the strength of her interest.

Rational Male – Q&A

RM_Q&A

SoSuave and Rational Male reader compleks had a few questions about what he read in The Rational Male book. Since I’ve been doing these weekend questions lately I thought these might make for some interesting discussions. Hopefully they wont distract you from family time this holiday weekend, but maybe they make for some interesting dinner table talk.

Just a side note here, I’m deliberately leaving my own answers less detailed than I normally would so as to inspire your owndiscussions:

If The Rational Male was recommended to me as a book about game, I probably wouldn’t have read it. But my friend who put me onto it basically described it as a life altering piece that would forever change the way I viewed the world of inter-gender relations.

Big sell!

So I read it.

Being freshly unplugged I’m still just awakening from that groggy comatose/confused state. However I feel as though I have a slight head start on at least some of the material. Just by sheer chance, rather than any real research into the subject.

I’ve only ever been in one LTR (2years), and it was with the girl I first hooked up with (she let me sleep with her, better hang onto this one!). Anyway, I ended that (5-6years ago) and have been single ever since, with no desire of entering another relationship.

I started ‘spinning plates’ about a year ago, just through a natural realization that any moral/ethical objection was actually completely unfounded. Not just my own (programmed) objections, but objections from the feminine perspective, which I guess are one in the same. I thought I must have been ‘wired’ differently because I had no desire of settling back into a LTR. I actually argued my case on multiple occasions to avoid it happening.

This book was eye opening and definitely shed some light on issues I never would have even thought to question.

If you care to keep reading I’m just going to spew some thoughts/questions having just finished the book. Keep in mind this is from a very rudimentary understanding of the text.

QUESTIONS

1) Does ONEitis best Hypergamy?
We all know a girl (either personally or anecdotally) who is in a committed relationship with some deadbeat. Everyone knows she can do better, but you can’t possibly convince her to leave him. What factors are at play here? Does SHE suffer from ONEitis to the point that her hypergamous tendencies have been shut off?

Or could it be a case of low self esteem and lack of self worth, so much so that she believes he is the best she can do? Or could he actually just be an Alpha male (albeit a bad example of one)? I’m sure there’s a grey area or middle ground here with many factors potentially at play depending on the specific scenarios. But it’s a pretty common scenario and I’d like to hear what you guys think.

I get this one now and then – “What about this one great looking girl I know who’s stuck on this complete douchebag, deadbeat, scumbag, suckup, :insert invective here:?” While I’m not sold on the idea that women ever get ONEitis for a guy, I am thoroughly convinced that women being 1-2 SMV points below a particular man they’re involved with develop a strong attachment for him.

For women, oftentimes that attachment gets paired with the soul-mate myth. I’d separate that “spiritualism” from the ONEitis a man gets for a woman, but it’s still rooted in the same dynamic – the subconscious realization that this person is the ‘best they can do’ in the SMP.

The reason I’d make the separation between how men experience ONEitis and women is due to the concepts either have when it comes to love. Women’s concept of love is rooted in opportunism as a result of their innate drive towards hypergamous optimization. All this ‘deadbeat’ needs do is be perceptually 1-2 levels above her own perceived SMV and the Alpha prerequisite for Hypergamy is met.

Most guys looking from the outside of that perception in realize the guy’s a fuck up (even Alpha Buddah, Corey Worthington is an example), and we can’t understand why that subjectively hot woman can’t use reason and rationality to see that he is, but then, this is due to our own self-perceptions and our mistaken belief that women’s reason can be appealed to.

2) Genuine Inter-Gender friendships?
Okay, so i don’t have the book with me. But I remember reading a sub-section on inter-gender relationships. It didn’t sit well with me when I read it, but it’s probably something I will have to re-read. I have a lot of female friends. Friendships that go back 15 years. Some of these are very close friends in a completely non-sexual way.

I’m closer with some of these girls than I am with many of my male friends.
Initially these friendships may have blossomed based on the fact that I was a shy kid and didn’t have any ‘intimate’ relationships with women till I was 19. But they are now concreted as some of my most valued friendships.

What is your take on Rollos opinion of inter-gender friendships (as outlined in the rational male)?

My take in the book, and still is, is that men and women cannot be friends in the same way and to the same degree of intimacy that same sex friendships develop.

Men and women cannot be friends in the way or to the degree that most people perceive same sex friendship to be. Now the natural response to this is “I have lots of female friends” or “what are you trying to say, I can’t have female friends, they all haffta be enemies?” Which of course is the standard binary (black or white, all or nothing) retort and the trained AFC thinks anyone suggesting that men and women’s relations as friends could be anything less than equitable and fulfilling is just a neanderthal chauvinist thinking. However, they are incorrect – not because you wouldn’t want to actually be a woman’s friend. There are fundamental differences in the ways men and women view friendship within the framework of their own sex and the ways this transfers to the concept of intergender-friendship.

Quite simply there are limitations on the degree to which a friendship can develop between men and women. The easy illustration of this is that at some point your female “friend” will become intimately involved with another male; at which point the quality of what you perceived as a legitimate friendship will decay. It must decay for her intimate relationship to mature. For instance, I’ve been married for 18 years now; were I to entertain a deep friendship with another female (particularly an attractive female) other than my wife, my interest in this woman automatically becomes suspect of infidelity – and of course the same holds true for women with man-friends. This dynamic simply doesn’t exist for same sex friendships because the sexual aspect is inconsequential.

I should add here that the presumption of an equatable degree, character or quality of intergender friendship (platonic) being the same as a same-sex friendship is a product of the same “we’re-all-the-same-with-different-plumbing” naive equalism that deliberately ignores complementary differences between the sexes.

This presumption is actually a vetting mechanism for women’s control of sexual selection and Hypergamy. The social convention that promotes the idea of equitable concepts of friendship only serves women’s imperative of being able to hold the attentions of multiple male orbiters until such a time that she can optimize both sides of her sexual strategy (Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks). The longer you’re rapt by the idea of an equal intergender friendship, the longer she has to consolidate on whatever side of hypergamy she’s prioritizing at the phase of life she’s in. In other words, the longer you’re in the bullpen, the longer you’ll be a Plan B prospect.

3) Religion vs Evolution vs Habit?
This is a bit abstract. But in terms of a decayed loveless marriage, what would you say are the factors holding these marriages together? Neither party is happy, but they are also unwilling to do anything about it.

One clings to a religious frame as reason to not leave/divorce, as the children are all old enough now that “staying together for the childrens sake” no longer applies.

The other seems completely indifferent and stuck in the routine. Both are mid 50’s and have been married for 30 years and probably just scarred shitless of being alone. But what would you make of this from an ‘unplugged’ point of view. (might be a stretch from the realm of this book, but just curious).

What you’re describing is akin to the phenomenon of Grey Divorce. In the time line from my Preventative Medicine series, I briefly outline what’s known as the 20 year itch – the period of life, usually after 50 around the time a long-married couple becomes ’empty nesters’ and the binding responsibilities of raising children is at, or almost at an end.

It’s around this phase that a reassessment of one’s partner takes place and the prospects of living out the rest of a life with that person gets serious consideration. This is a phase that’s very telling of the overall prospects of marriage as an institution on whole and how either sex really considers their idealistic, loving union from very mater-of-fact practicality, when there is no longer a mutually cooperative goal (childrearing) as the centerpiece of that relationship.

Religion and/or a conviction that children are better raised by an involved two parent (male and female) family who are both mutually invested in the success of their kids is generally a bond that both parties mutually agree to as the cornerstone of their marriage.

Once that goal has been met (or termed out) then that relationship must be reestablished and based on a genuine interest and desire for the other person. For a man this may involve his realizing an understanding of tenets of the Game that he’s, until then, unwittingly been a party to. For women this may be a longing for renewed interest from extra-marital (but not necessarily infidelity) attentions and desire from other men.

It’s kind of telling how men’s idealistic concept of love endures beyond his late-life Epiphany stage. In spite of having experienced the consequences and all-downside risks men face in their prior marriages, it’s still overwhelmingly men who want to remarry and take another shot at that idealism.

It is women, in either their veiled pragmatism or their aging, unrealizable opportunistic concept of love who are more or less indifferent to the prospects of remarriage.

“Most currently divorced or widowed men are open to the idea of remarriage, but women in the same circumstances are less likely to be,” says the report, which draws on figures from a survey it conducted in May and June. Almost two thirds of men either want to remarry or would at least consider it, while fewer than a half of women would.

These stats alone are more than enough to verify my assertions of how either sex hold different concepts of love.

Men still dream of an idealistic love, and women have find precious little use for men beyond the practical when presented with the prospect of having to optimize Hypergamy at an age they are no longer capable of intersexual competition.

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.

 

Year Three

year_3

August 18th was the 3 year anniversary for The Rational Male. My apologies for not having dropped this post sooner, but I held off until September because I wanted to post the most accurate numbers I could for August. That, and I think I needed to hammer out the concepts of the past 3 weeks topics before they escaped me.

So here it is readers, three short years ago I finally decided to motivate myself to commit almost 10 years of SoSuave forum posts and all of those concepts into a unified blog – and then dare to write a book.

This has been an interesting and contentious year for me. In August of 2013 I had just returned to Nevada after living in Florida for the past 8 years. My work and living situation changed drastically, but now in hindsight, for so much the better. My relocation couldn’t have come at a worse time as I was about half through the first book I’ve ever attempted writing and had to delay it month after month as I basically rebooted my life and the lives of my wife and daughter.

I officially published The Rational Male on October 1st, 2013 and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. It certainly wasn’t easy and I’ve got a new edition, with better editing coming on the heels of the next volume of Rational Male.

Once the book published it allowed me to step back a bit from my blog writing to see how these core principles fit into a larger whole of where I wanted the blog and possibly the next book to go.

In just under 9 months the response has been truly humbling for me. That probably sounds like some standard bullshit an author is supposed to say – even calling myself an “author” still feels kind of strange – but when I receive emails and comments, or read reviews on Amazon about how what I’ve written in the book and blog has changed people’s lives, helped them to understand both women and themselves better, and even prevented suicides, ‘humbling’ is the only word I can muster.

I’ve had more than a few readers ask me if I’ll ever take up writing full-time, and I think the answer is always going to be ‘no’. I never set out to make a book or even writing my livelihood. I make a good living doing what I do, so I don’t need to write a book to supplement my income. I write because I feel it’s important to reveal how things work in intergender dynamics to help men avoid the traps and life altering decisions most make because they simply had no one expose what’s under the hood with respect to women and how the Game is played.

I also feel it’s important for me to stay in the game so to speak. To an overwhelming degree what I write is the result of the experiences I’ve had being long employed in various industries that keep me out in the world in a social context. I’ve had the unique experience of both being “in the field” and observing behavior while also being a married Man and father. Honestly, one of the reasons I decided to move back to Nevada was to maintain this situation. My place isn’t behind a desk (at least not Thursdays – Saturdays), it’s out in the world doing something, creating things and moments, and learning from them.

In three years I have never monetized the Rational Male, nor do I have any plans to do so. As my blog numbers have steadily risen I’ve had several opportunities to do just this, but this blog has never been just about me. I’ve always been pretty upfront with my numbers at Rational Male and as they’ve climbed I’ve always believed this was a watermark of how the manosphere on whole has expanded into popular consciousness. The rise you see in these numbers represents the growing awareness of the Red Pill, Game and men coming to understand the realities of the social and psychological landscape of intergender relations that they find themselves in.

Personally I find this very encouraging.

The Rational Male – Preventive Medicine

My most immediate plans for the rest of 2014 is to complete the next volume of The Rational Male – Preventive Medicine. I had initially planned this book to be a quick hit one-off ebook with an expanded focus on the Preventative Medicine series of posts I published this spring, but the rewriting and compiling fluidly blew up into enough material for a whole new volume.

This book, while still incorporating some past posts, has a deliberate purpose of helping men (both red pill and the uninitiated) to understand modern feminine nature so as to help them avoid the worst of the most common life-decisions with women as well as to aid them in understanding what’s happened to them in past, and what possibly awaits them in future relationships.

This will be the primary focus of the new book. The Rational Male I consider the core-work, but Preventive Medicine will build upon this core with a direct purpose. Preventive Medicine will be the answer for the men who “wished they’d had all of this information before” they made the choices they made, and to help them understand why they did.

Moving Forward

Lastly, I’d like to state now that this blog has been, and will continue to be the testing ground for red pill / Game concepts. It will continue to be an unmoderated forum, and as such, as a marketplace of ideas, sometimes this means considering blue pill dissent and occasionally outright trolling. I’ve always felt the benefits of open discourse outweigh the nuisance of simple myopic hating, and more often than not I’ve been rewarded with having my commenters make the same counterpoints to these individuals I would’ve made myself. This is a wonderful gauge of how well men (and some women) understand and internalize the ideas I’ve offered here, as well as educating me of things I may not have considered about those very same ideas.

I should also add that despite the occasional suggestion that I moderate the comments I’ve found that in 3 years my commenters really moderate themselves and others. I think this is a testament to the sincerity and genuineness of interest in those commenting over the years. I’d like to thank you all for keeping this standard of commenting. One of the best compliments I get is when a newly unplugged guy lets me know that he benefitted as much from the level of discourse in the comments as he did from a particular article that brought him to The Rational Male.

The message and purpose of The Rational Male will never be watered down, and certainly never for the sake of my personal betterment. The unvarnished, sometimes difficult truths of the red pill will continue to be this blog’s priority. The purpose of this blog isn’t affirming anyone’s relationships or dogma, or compromised by anyone’s individual circumstance; neither is it meant to discourage those relationships or foster a hopeless nihilism – the purpose is education.

What anyone takes from that education I leave to the individual. I will continue to provide my own insights and what I may think are ‘best practices’ with regard to what this education represents for men (and I encourage others to do so as well in the commentary), but ultimately what works best for myself or others may not be what works best for someone else.

As I’ve stated before, I don’t want to show you how to become a better man, I want you to show you how to be a better man. What’s discussed here will often show you solutions or give you actionable information about how to make yourself a better man, but in the end it must come from you.

Thank you all for your involvement in making this blog a better collective experience for everyone.

Here’s to another year of Rational Male.

20 Questions

 

RT

Back in May of this year I was asked to do a second installment of the red pill Reddit forum’s AMA (“ask me anything”) and I’m not really sure too many of my core readers were aware of it. Unless you follow me on Twitter you probably didn’t know I’ve done two now.

After I’d closed out that discussion thread it reminded me of another ‘interview’ I was asked to participate in at my home forum of SoSuave back in December of last year. I hate to say, but I never really got around to posting my replies back to the original thread, however I did save the questions as a post draft so I could do the interview some justice later.

Well here we are. Next week will mark the three year anniversary of my launching Rational Male, and as always I’ll be doing another year’s retrospective post as well as another Best of Rational Male – Year Three links post.

I make it a policy not to go into too much personal detail on Rational Male unless the topic is something I can illustrate better with a personal story. I’ve never wanted the Rational Male to about me, but rather the experiences and input of my readers. However, after almost three years and one book later, I figure I’ll open up once and publish these question I was asked back in December with the hope that maybe something I answer will give someone some new insight themselves.

 

 

1) What brought you to SoSuave and how did you find the site?

Unlike a lot of SoSuave guys I actually found the forum because someone suggested to me that I might be able to reach more guys who needed help there.

Most guys go searching for answers about how they can get back with an ex, or why their last LTR imploded on them because they went too Beta or didn’t understand the basics of red pill awareness. I found SoSuave through the old Ladder Theory site as I was toying with the idea of psychology as a second major when I was at university. A lot of people don’t know the SoSuave of today is actually the second version of the forum. My understanding is that Alan, the forum admin and owner, had to expand to a larger server and forum architecture due to the site being so overwhelmingly popular.

There really wasn’t a manosphere or what we term Red Pill back then, just Mystery Method, PUArtistry, FastSeduction, RSD and the collected experiences of guys just posting their Field Reports and hitting upon commonalities of those experiences.

Mystery had made some conjectures with regards to the psychology involved in pickup and I just happened to come across it while I was studying behavioral psychology and personality studies. I also found that making the connection between the two, at least publicly amongst teachers and classmates, was a very contentious prospect. I got called a misogynist a lot back then just for proposing the germs of the ideas that have built the foundation of what the Rational Male and the red pill have become now.

2) Any special reason for your SoSuave username, why you chose it?

It was actually a hold-over from my old online persona from some other forums and it stuck. If you watch the movie L.A. Confidential you’ll get the meaning of it. It actually seems more fitting now with the book’s release. Rollo Tomassi was the generic name given to a nameless criminal who got away with his crime.

I also understand that Rollo was the name of an infamous viking. I found this interesting since we both descend from Danish heritage.

3) What’s the best and or worst advice you’ve ever received in regards to chicks?

JBY, Just Be Yourself is definitely the worst advice because it’s so endemic of people who are ignorant of Game. It’s such a passive, easy dismissal of a guy wanting to know why what he’s been doing isn’t getting him the results he wants, but at the same time it illustrates the belief and trust of the person saying ‘just be yourself’ in the conditioning that brought them to it.

It’s a very uncomfortable revelation for anyone to embrace in thinking they should need to change and/or improve themselves in order to get the results that they want. The foundational mistruth of blue pill conditioning is that a nebulous ‘being of oneself’ should be enough for anyone (or ‘the right ONE‘) to be attracted to, and discourages any real self-analysis or improvement. ONEitis and Just Be Yourself tend to be codependents and, in tandem, really fuck up a lot of guys lives.

Best advice is more difficult, but for me personally it was “believe what a woman does, not what she says.” For most red pill guys this seems kind of remedial now because it’s a foundation for really unplugging I covered almost 11 years ago, but it can’t be stressed enough.

This basic truth is what inspired The Medium IS the Message and as stupid-simple a truism as it is, it’s often the most difficult part of Game-awareness that blue pill guys first struggle with. They struggle because their earliest feminized conditioning has always taught them that women are fundamentally the equal, rational agents that men are and they will relate to boys / men in full confidence and reason (just as they would expect from men) if they themselves don’t play games with them and communicate in full confidence and full disclosure.

It’s believe what she says and ignore, forgive or get over your judgementalism for what she does because she’s (supposed to be) being equitably honest, forthright, and knows exactly why she does what she does in spite of herself.

I don’t believe men and women are equals of each other in an egalitarian sense – there are simply too many empirically provable differences in both sex’s psychology and biology to draw any other conclusion; and as such each sex has it’s own imperatives and strategies for achieving them.

I do however believe that the sexes evolved to be complementary to each other, one sex’s strengths compensating for the other’s weaknesses. It’s this overreaching social impetus (idealistic humanism and feminine social primacy) that encourages us to believe we are independent, autonomous and self-sufficient entities (founded in feminine solipsism), equal in biology and psychological potential that imbalances that mutually beneficial complementariness.

4) Have you ever posted in or lurked in other seduction forums/blogs etc?

I occasionally post on Dalrock’s, Just 4 Guys, Chateau Heartiste, Roosh’s forum, The Red Pill reddit, Return of Kings and a few others. I sometimes track back to forums my articles get linked to, but I honestly don’t have time to respond to everything I read.

5) How many chicks have you slept with?

My N count is public record; more than 40, less than 50. I’m not trying to be ambiguous, it’s just that when I try to make an accurate count I just don’t remember some names – mostly just places partners and experiences.

Just for some red pill perspective, most of that experience was between the ages of 17 and 28 in the late late 80’s to mid 90’s when there was no formal Game, manosphere, internet, cell phones, Tinder, etc. – getting laid was all analog and mostly instinctual.

It’s kind of funny to think that my N count is well above average, but I expect in comparison to many of the single, active, members of the manosphere / PUA community, 40 individual sex partners might be so low as to disqualify me from being taken seriously with regards to Game.

By the time I was 21-22 I’d figured out how to get laid with some relative predictability. Mostly because I was a fairly good looking, semi-professional musician playing in Hollywood with a bit of social proof and a practiced ability to pick out women who’d be into me.

I should also mention that of those 40+, four were long term relationships, including my wife.

This’ll sound facetious, but I’ve never thought of sex as being “validating” or ego-affirming. I honestly think a lot of that expectation comes from a feminized conditioning about “how sex should be” for men. I was, and still kind of am, more into sex as experience. It’s always been something fun to enjoy with a woman for me, not some meaningful act of cosmic significance. I’ve had sex with women I loved and women I didn’t, some were memorable, some were…meh. Even in my bluest of blue pill days my ‘validation’ came from other sources, not sex.

6) What was your worst and best experience with a chick? (wife, girlfriend or not)

The worst was the 4 years I spent with a BPD girlfriend. I did a post on it. I was in the pit of blue pill hell and pushed to the brink. I didn’t know what borderline personality disorder was back then, in fact I don’t think the DSM even recognized the complex as a psychological disorder in the early 90s.

My best experience is hard to put a finger on. It’s interesting to think about definitively bad experiences, but hard to put a “best” title on a good one. All of my best experiences would have to be with Mrs. Tomassi, our wedding, our daughter’s birth, the fact that even in her late 40s she’s still in fitness caliber shape and we genuinely enjoy each other.

Pre-marriage, I had my share of rock-club women, and when it was on, it was really ‘on’. I can think of at least 4 very memorable women, one was a fuck-buddy who was easily the most sexually hungry (and not just with me I came to find out).

I know the trope is that older women are supposed to be better in the sack than younger women – this was never my experience at all. In fact the younger the girl, the easier time I had bedding her, and the more adventurous a lover she usually was. I think even marginal social proof has a greater impression on younger women and they’re more eager. The older women I’ve been with have always been much more self-conscious.

7) Have you ever gotten friendzoned by a chick and if so were you able to get out of it?

Of course, particularly in my teenage years. In my early 20s I had enough female interest that I’d simply blow off the women I learned weren’t worth the investment. There was one exception though; a girl I knew from a community college who “didn’t date rocker guys or guys in bands.”

In hindsight I know she was leaning into her Epiphany Phase (maybe a bit early) and was trying to do things “the right way” after getting after it with various guys in her early 20s.

I was kind of surprised at getting a LJBF since it hadn’t happened to me for years by then, but all it took was right place, right time, a little social proof and the competition anxiety of other interested women, and I got the lay – which, by comparison at the time was kind of underwhelming. Still, I went back to pursuing her afterwards, got re-LJBF’d and I moved on to other plates.

8) Have you ever had a chick or chicks offering their pussy to you on a platter and you blew them off for whatever reason? And why? (i.e. they offered the pussy on a platter to you at a bar in conversation or even at your or their place and you blew them off.)

Yes, but mostly due to logistics rather than from spite or wanting to up the urgency with a girl as most guys think denying women sex will do. Most often it was because I had a better offer somewhere else or I was just plain tired. When it’s happened to me in the past the girl was a) on the cusp of my maximum weight limit, or b) there was something a bit off about her personally – as in she didn’t seem right mentally.

I once left a DTF girl in a hot tub because I just couldn’t bring myself to hitting that big of a girl (but, in her defense, I have what I think are exceptionally high physical standards for women)

9) How did you handle chicks who’ve flaked?

It depends on what time of life we’re talking about. In my younger, hungrier days, I tolerated flaking because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know the medium was the message, and I thought it was caused by something I fucked up, which I guess it was. Later I simply didn’t care because I had other plates going at the time, but I found that the more options I had going (or had the potential to get going) the less women were likely to flake.

I go into it in Plate Theory, but there are a lot of subliminal behavioral cues a guy gives off (mostly unknowingly) when he’s seeing another (or more) woman that other women pick up on.

Mannerisms, attitude, vernacular, a guy with options just acts different than a guy with none. It’s like women pick up on the subcommunication of a guy who’s less invested in them and associate it with their sexual competition of women who might be interested in him.

10) Most plates you’ve spun at one time?

Actively (meaning I double shifted at the time) 4. Inactively 7 when I was about 23.

11) How did you handle a time of having no plates?

Again, that’s really a question of which time.

Between the ages of 17 and 21, I wouldn’t even consider seeing more than whatever girlfriend I had ONEitis for at the time. However, even before I met my wife, I had some irons in the fire, but when I didn’t I don’t think I worried too much about it since I knew I was probably just one party or gig or business event away from meeting some new talent.

I know a lot of guys get weird or depressed about a dry spell, but I was always kind of optimistic about having no plates because I enjoyed having the freedom to get with whomever, and I looked forward to meeting new women.

12) Dress style you use for going out on the town/ social functions?

I work in the liquor and casino industry so it depends on the event and what time of year it is. Nowadays if I’m out it’s usually because I’m at a promo, a new brand launch or some casino special event I’m involved with.

Lets just say that ‘business casual’ is neither. I either go loose or I go tight, but it really depends on the venue. Loose is jeans, some nice slip-ons, a stylish tailored button down, maybe a casual sport coat. If I’m tight it means I’m somewhere upscale or I’m with the people I work with, so I fall back on well tailored suits.

When you get older, style is much different than when you’re younger. What you wear at 22 is not what you wear at 42; there’s ways for men to capitalize on a maturity in style that women expect from men with the refinement that comes from maturity.

I’m probably not the best guy to hit up about style though – I think I spend way too much on what I could probably get cheaper. Christian McQueen is a better guy to ask about style.

13) Are you currently working out/exercising?

Always. I’m at the gym at 5-5:30am five days of the week, and I haven’t gone more than taking one week off from that schedule for about 15 years now. That may seem like dedication, but it’s really about convenience; early morning is the only time my schedule permits me to work out, and honestly I prefer working out in an empty gym.

For about the last 3 years I’ve been doing kind of a modified Max OT workout. I got into straight Max OT when I lived in Florida after a trainer friend suggested it to me.

I’m not overly huge to begin with, but once I started lifting heavier (and I mean heavy all the time) and my intensity went up, it helped me push past a plateau naturally. I put on a solid 8 lbs. of muscle inside of 4 months. Heh, I had to buy new pants because my thighs got bigger.

It’s probably not for everyone, I just know my body responded well to it. You do have to be careful of injury though, and not just in the lifts. I fucked up my back twice in about 2 years just getting cocky pulling heavier dumbbells off the rack. Just because your focused muscle group can do the lift doesn’t mean your other supporting muscles can. You gotta be careful.

14) For meeting chicks in the past which way was most successful in your point of view and have you tried all venues? Day, Social circle, Online social media/ Online dating, clubs, vacation, through family, work or whatever else.

Again, I’m probably not the best guy to ask about contemporary pickup Game. Back when I was inadvertently spinning plates, my Game at the time consisted of playing in various semi-pro bands and hooking up after a gig. I suppose that would amount to Night or Club Game now, but it was the environment I was in and familiar with. Most of my Game relied on social proof, DHV and looking the part. There was a definite ‘character role’ women liked that I played very well then.

It got to a point where I could get a girl to buy me a drink which I’d nurse for a bit while I talked her up. If I got the right IOIs from her I’d simply say something like “hey, our set’s coming up, watch my drink till I get back will ya?” If she was still there at the bar with my glass after an hour the girl was always DTF.

I should add that, later in life I became very apt at social circle Game, but again, that’s always going to be dependent on social proof, preselection and demonstrating higher value to get a third party endorsement of your SMV.

I know the popular presumption is that if a guy walks into a club/party/social gathering with a ‘hot girl who’s his friend’ it sends some magic preselection vibe to all the other women at the gathering. I’ve never found that to be true. Not that I doubt it happens, but rather if I’m somewhere with a woman (friend) who’s SMV is 1-2 points above the most attractive woman at the event, other women tend to get catty or figure if I can score her why would she bother with me?

There’s a fine line between the benefits of preselection and women simple feeling outclassed by a sexual competitor.

15) Have you ever went full “No Contact”? (Not expecting “results” of getting a chick back but simply cutting all ties.)

Oh yes. I really had no choice but to go no contact with the BPD girl I’d been with in my 20’s, but she’s really the only woman I’ve ever made a conscious effort never to contact again.

For other’s I think no contact really came down to my indifference to the women I really had no more interest in after some event. Though I didn’t do it intentionally, I was spinning plates and had other options to exercise so I’d just become occupied with another woman making no contact just a matter of course.

As I put forth in Plate Theory, non-exclusivity and maintaining your options is your best insurance against ONEitis, which in turn makes for a healthier frame of monogamy for a man later if that’s what you choose to do. No contact is easy when you’re genuinely indifferent to the girl you’re going no contact on.

16) How is married life going for you so far?

18 years on July 20th. I’ve only ever written a couple of direct posts about my marriage, but that’s mostly due to my not wanting men to view it as some model to aspire to. I understand my circumstance aren’t what most guy’s are, personally, family or career-wise, but I don’t for a minute believe I married the elusive unicorn of a woman.

I love Mrs. Tomassi more than anything in this world, we’re a very good match, and red pill awareness has only accented that good match. And for the record, yes, Mrs. Tomassi occasionally reads what I write here and has read my book.

17) Have you read the full DJ Bible? Or some of it/none of it/ participated in it?

The old version yes. The new version not entirely, but I have several of my old essays included in it. I still think it’s a pretty valuable resource for guys new to the red pill.

18) Have you ever met up with or talked to any SoSuave posters offline?

Yes, when I lived in Florida there were about six guys from the forum I used to meet occasionally for sushi or at one of my vodka brands’ promos. Beyond that I do email and (very rarely) phone consults with people who request them depending on my availability and ability to help at any given time.

For the record, I never charge money for a consult.

19) Favorite So Suave posters or posters on your site other blogs etc?

Gawd, I don’t want to play favorites, but in no particular order off the top of my head I think Deti, Dalrock, Novaseeker, Donalgraeme, Good Luck Chuck, Deepdish, Stingray, Morpheus, Han Solo, Obsidian, Mark Minter, Yohami, YaReally, Jeremy, Earl (yes Earl), LiveFree and even the commenters I most emphatically disagree with, all give me something new to think about.

20) How’s feedback coming along for your book, The Rational Male?

Better than I ever imagined. It’s been a success in everything I hoped it would be in the regard that it’s reaching men and helping change their minds and lives. My intent was never to make a load of cash from it, but rather to make it as accessible as possible to have the greatest reach possible and it’s more than done this after only 9 months.

Think Like a Woman

Men perceive female interpretive reflexiveness in a male context. Women perceive male interpretive awareness in a female context.

Those are two $10 psychological ways of saying men instinctively think women will respond to their approaches (irrespective of Game prowess) on male terms. In other words, they expect women will respond in a rational manner similar to how they as men would. To be sure, this is a result of decades of gender equalist conditioning, but you can’t lay the dynamic entirely at the feet of equalism. Guy’s first order is to think deductively when constructing their mental schemas about how best to solve the problem of getting their sexual imperatives met (usually Beta Game). The disconnect comes when they presume that women are their gender equals and as such will react to their ‘game’ in a similar, reasoned fashion.

JDELA, from the SoSuave forum laments an understanding that comes from imposing a male perspective onto women’s perspectives. Case in point:

If a Neg hit works, not only does it show there’s a lack of self esteem and mental balance, but also the relationship will fail.

From a male perspective, this would make complete and rational sense. If a man were to Neg you or another man, the most rational response would be to interpret that as disrespect and to take offense. In truth, guy’s Neg each other all the time in the form of ‘giving his buddys some shit’ about something. Men do this as a form of unity building, but our inclination to rib each other stops there.

Now lets say that the guy getting Negged, not only accepts it, but becomes intrigued and friendly with the guy negging him. Would you have any respect for either one of them? Probably not. You’d say the guy doing the Negging was being an asshole (see AMOGing)  and the guy getting Negged suffered from a”lack of self-esteem.”

What you’re doing is casting what you’d expect a woman’s response to be in the male perspective. The most common complaint read on any dating site (SoSuave to Love Shack) comes from guys who are dumbfounded that women consistently opt for the Bad Boy Alpha Jerk instead of him and his Nice, loyal, respectful, dependable self. As bourn out by the experiences and observations of women’s behavior from countless millions of men for centuries, what we as men would expect to be the most logical, rational and pragmatic choice of action women could make is rarely proven by the ones they do make.

Don’t get lost in the details; this isn’t a debate about whether or not Negs work or the frequency with which women opt for a Bad Boy. It has everything to do with the fact that men base most of their actions, their beliefs, their personal investments, etc. upon deductive reasoning and predictable outcomes from what they believe is reliable information. So when all you ever hear from women is that they “want a guy with a good heart” or someone sensitive, respectful, humorous, etc. on down the list it would be cause for some considerable confusion when women consistently overlook guys like this in favor of one who is the opposite of her stated desires. Either the data is flawed, our interpretation of it is flawed, or the one relating it is flawed – and probably all three.

So in light of such a consistent conflict of purpose, we have to conclude that what women say and what women do are often at odds with each other. Negs work on women. There’s certainly an art to, and it’s not a one-size-fits-all, but they do work with enough consistency that you can generally predict an outcome. So the question is this: do the vast majority of women suffer from a lack of self-esteem or are we expecting them to act as men would?

It’s very easy to write off the women who’d opt for the Bad Boy as low-quality, but what do you do when your hi-quality woman does the same? You can shoot an arrow, paint the target around it, and get a bullseye every time, but you can’t ignore the incongruency. Breaking out of this plugged-in beta mindset that convinces men that women will react the same as they would is one of the most important transitions of taking the red pill.

The irony of this male-centric preconception is that even in instances where plugged-in men would agree that you “can’t treat a lady like that” the interaction is still colored by the assumption of a male interpretive perspective on the part of a woman. For plugged-in men this comes as an instinctual reflex – it’s one of many – that was part of his life’s conditioning.

Think Like a Woman

As I stated prior, unlearning what you know about women and your equalist mental preposition is usually one of the more difficult aspects of unplugging. Abandoning your old ways of interacting with women involves a very real risk of rejection, but keep in mind that relearning the reality of the differences in mental process between yourself and a prospective woman will make that transition easier.

A lot gets made about the advantages of ‘thinking like a woman’ in terms of Game. For all the variation of playing the Dandy or adjusting for a more feminine-identification technique, I think it’s very important not to actually become a woman in your mental outlook. Most plugged-in guys are already women in their perspective of gender. When I advocate a better understanding of the feminine mind, know that it’s always in terms of making what I study and profess here into actionable practices. Anticipate outcomes, predict results based on what you know a woman would be thinking; not what any equal and neutral, well-reasoned generic person would. Plugged-in guys avoid this even to the limbic root level of their own mental processing because it rings of sexism; and anything minutely associated with sexism is an automatic sexual disqualifier for men with the scarcity mentalities that fem-centrism has raised in them.

An effective Game-aware man has to accept a base understanding of sexism; sexism in the respective differences that characterize the differences between the sexes. Sexism will be used by you or on you, but you will not be exempted from it. You may have been raised into equalism, but clinging to gender equalism after the fact is simply one more Buffer against rejection, and it’s a buffer most guys have a very tough time recognizing in themselves.