white knights

The ‘Real’ Nice

fake_nice_guy

I once posed this question to the SoSuave forum:

Let us say, in a strange alternate world, women would LOVE you if you were a Nice Guy. In this world, you could do all the things you wanted to do. You could be sappy. You could write her poetry and SHE WOULD LOVE IT. The more of a Nice Guy you were, the more women in general would love and appreciate you.

And in this alternate world, the jerks and players would be the ones sneered at by women. If you were a jerk in this world, no woman would like you. If you were cocky, they would dismiss you immediately.

Would you remain a Nice Guy if you were in this alternate world?

I got a variety of answers ranging from the want for clearer, but no less useful terminologies,…

First off, I object to the labels. I know they’ve been used here and in the seduction community for a long time, but I don’t really believe in the stereotypes. I’m not a ‘nice guy’ or a jerk or a bad boy. Having said that and cleared the air, let’s go back to the stereotypes:

How many guys came here to this forum as “nice guys”? They were probably perfectly happy with themselves and only decided to change so they could do better with women. So they became assholes. Just to please women. I don’t see why they wouldn’t do the opposite in this “alternate reality”. I don’t care for the stereotypes. Half the guys on this forum think a “jerk” or a “douche” is a desireable thing to be. Something’s wrong with this picture. Somehow a “jerk” has become a guy with backbone who stands up for himself. 

The definition of a “nice guy” should just be a man who respects others as well as himself. But instead, in dating circles, “nice guy” means wimp.

…to the hope for Relational Equity and an appreciation for being ‘nice’…

I don’t think it’s that simple. You can be compassionate and kind without supplicating–and the whole “nice” thing isn’t really about kindness, it’s about supplicating and expecting something in return. “Nice” is really just synonymous with needy, unattractive behaviors, as I see it-it’s not even GENUINE kindness, as when you expect nothing in return.

To me, being an alpha “bad boy” just means going after what you want. It means pushing the envelope and being aggressive in pickup. It doesn’t mean being antisocial or violent, or being a dick to people. It often happens that an aggressive guy has these tendencies, but I don’t think they contribute to his success with women unless they bring him some fame, too. I think women DO have a capacity to appreciate kind gestures, and will certainly judge a man by how he treats his family, etc. The “protector of loved ones” is an attractive archetype to women. 

The guys that lose out are the ones that do “nice” things in the hopes that a woman will grow attracted to them. They let the women control the frame in this case, and act like children trying to please their mother. This is always an attraction killer–it doesn’t matter if they’re a jerk or an alpha in every other aspect of their life. Lots of really tough dudes are complete wussies around women. 

It is truly one of the cosmic ironies of the universe that women should completely lack the capacity to truly appreciate the niceties of men – yet still perpetually claim to desire those niceties.

With the notable exceptions of natural born Alphas, I believe most men would overwhelmingly default to being compassionate, empathic souls, steeped in romantic notions of chivalry, dedication and honor. Whether this sentiment is the result of a genuine dedication to principle or inspired by a hope that women will appreciate his sacrifices to principle and reciprocate with her intimacy is really a Crisis of Motive.

That was really the gist of my question – are guys just playing nice to get laid or is “niceness” (for lack of a better term) something deep rooted that they have to necessarily repress in order to be taken seriously as a sexual competitor because women would despise him were he to be as ‘nice’ as he really has the capacity for.

Most guys make lame attempts to redefine raw, natural, Alpha masculinity to fit into accord with all these noble qualities. Tragically women and reality prove them wrong at virtually every instance, but their fallback denial is an easy one (ironically provided for them by the Feminine Imperative) – “those women who don’t appreciate your niceness are just Damaged Women®, no quality woman would value an asshole above a real Nice Guy.”

Men are simply never rewarded for displays of these higher-self aspirations with genuine appreciation of women. They certainly appreciate them on a by-need basis, and as a ‘value added‘ benefit, but the esoteric, self-actualizing concerns men believe women should prioritize as primarily attractive aspects of themselves are never what they hope women will appreciate. If anything overly ‘nice’ men are punished for it, either in the instance or progressively over time.

The only way to garner true appreciation, true valuation, truly inspired displays of affection, from women is to covertly imply the risk of losing a high-value Man. Whether the man is even truly of a higher value is irrelevant, only the perception needs to be reinforced for her. Risk of loss is all that factors. Risk of losing an investment in optimizing hypergamy is weighed against her own perceived sexual market value and the effort needed to reinvest in another, potentially higher SMV man. Risk of loss is why her imagination furiously spins the wheel in her head.

That sounds horrible, but the truth often is. Women’s lack of appreciation for the more compassionate natures of men, and their consuming regard for rewarding men that appease their hypergamy is so well proven it’s become predictable enough to develop techniques and behavioral modifications to exploit it (i.e. Game). Most guys would like nothing better than to honestly play the loving, white knight, romantic who women bemoan a lack of in the world. Yet for every sonnet composed, every provision met, every compliment delivered and every well planned candlelit dinner conversation, there’s a woman feverishly fucking her Alpha bad boy in his low rent apartment for fear of losing him to the competition.

Attraction and Arousal


Occasionally we return to a common theme of debate with self-proclaimed ‘red pill women’ in various manosphere comment threads about how women may be attracted to certain characteristics men would like to identify as being ‘nice’, but no woman is aroused sexually by these qualities. As I’ve argued in the past, attraction and arousal are two separate elements of hypergamy. Alpha Fucks is arousing, Beta Bucks is attractive.

A couch surfing Alpha will be arousing enough to bang women indiscriminately despite his impoverished condition. He has no relational equity, and so frustrates the efforts of men who believe that the definition of Alpha ought to be based on the equity they hope women will appreciate. Women will return (even if just mentally) to the callous or cavalier Alpha because he arouses her, but she will stay faithful to her well-providing husband because what he offers is attractive to her.

This is why I say, by and large, women love most men for what they represent – once they cease to represent that, once they stumble in maintaining that, hypergamy is free to run. On a personal level this may be you losing a job or how you failed a shit test, on a meta scale it may be women’s social capacity to provide for themselves.

A lot of guys get lost in these definitions. They believe a woman at her word in what she finds attractive in a man, but then conflate this list of qualities (read any woman’s online dating profile) with what a woman finds arousing. While there may be attraction without arousal, there is never arousal by way of what makes a man attractive. Your respectability, sterling character and being good with kids doesn’t make you look any better when your shirt comes off.

The New Nice

There’s an interesting social convention that’s developed as Game-awareness has become more widespread. As with all social conventions it provides a convenient rationale for women to cling to in order to alleviate uncomfortable truths, but the dilemma of the Faux-Nice Guy has picked up a lot of steam in the feminist / feminine-primary set of women. I covered this a while back in Play Nice, but since then I’ve been reading more about how this convention is dovetailing into the re-imagining of a so called Rape Culture.

As women become more aware of Game (even if just peripherally) there’s developed a convenient distrust of men’s ‘Nice’ qualities. The dynamics I put forth in The Savior Schema all become suspect for what in essence is really a tit for tat exchange of services rendered for intimacy at a later date (once his niceties have proven his worth).

The problem with this is twofold, first, the guy’s relying on Beta Game, convinced that what women say they are attracted to is what they are also aroused by, believe that faux Nice Guys are blowing their chances with the women they believe will eventually come to love them for their earnest Niceness. If all these charlatan Nice Guys are jading their pool of prospective nice-appreciating women it ruins their Game. Consequently they get agitated by women doubting any man’s sincerity and by extension their own. This then leads to Nice Guy infighting and greater, more sincere displays of a Niceness that really only ruins their Game that much more.

Second, women’s doubt of a Nice Guy’s sincerity and unsolicited ‘niceness’ is really a red herring meant to distract men employing Nice Guy Game away from the point that they simply don’t find them all that attractive (and certainly not arousing). Being nice, supportive, dutiful and possessing all the intrinsic characteristics on her list of attractive traits in the hope of proving his worth and qualifying for her intimate acceptance is really one long Appeal to a Woman’s Reason. It’s very convenient for a woman to enjoy (and often become dependent upon) the services a Nice Guy renders to her, but when that Nice Guy is discovered to have a sexual interest in her the “you weren’t really nice, you just expected something sexual in return” social convention finds its use.

Women have been aware of this Nice Guy Game, prequalification schema for generations, because it used to actually work in a time and culture where the Beta Bucks / parental investment side of women’s hypergamy was the predominant factor for determining of a man’s intimate acceptability. The problem now is that the deductive reasoning men use – find out what women want in order to become intimate, become it and solve the problem – in order to achieve a woman’s intimacy comes from an old set of books that no woman is still using. However the reliance on the responsibilities outlined in that first set of books are still useful when it comes to control the intents and actions of men.

Chivalry is an anachronism in a post-feminist society, particularly where equalism is concerned, but it’s a liability when it’s useful to the feminine imperative. It may be a man’s duty not to expect sex in exchange for his niceties and services, but when his chivalry is useful to her then it becomes his responsibility.

The Savior Schema

“Every time a man is being nice to you, he’s offering dick. That’s all it is. ‘Uh, can I get that for ya? How ’bout some dick? Can I help you with that? Can I help you with some dick? Do you need some dick?’ ” – Chris Rock

The Savior Schema – the beta male expectation of reciprocation of intimacy (usually sexual) for problems solved.

This is a learned/developed behavior that results from men’s natural push to deductively search for the most rational solution to a problem. It’s really a linear logic; I need sex + women have sex + I must discover what is required for me to get sex from women + I will perform/embody/identify with said requirements = woman will reciprocate with her intimacy. Needless to say this is simplistic at best, but men have a tendency to believe that women will respond as rationally as they themselves would in qualifying for her stated desires. The manosphere is full of men who can tell you this simply isn’t the case for any number of reasons, but sadly they still think that women ought to live up to their implied “agreement.”

The fundamental flaw of the Savior Schema (also, Captain Save a Ho) is that it is essentially negotiated intimacy, and negotiated intimacy is never genuine. You can fix a woman’s flat tire, help her out of a financial jam, fix her a nice lasagne, give her the perfect shoulder to cry on, take care of her kids and listen to her drone on for hours on the phone, and she’ll still go fuck her outlaw biker boyfriend because her intimacy with him is genuine, unnegotiated, unobligated desire. She wants to have sex with him, she doesn’t owe him sex.

What AFCs fail to understand is that all the financial, emotional, dependable support you could possibly offer a woman is no substitute for raw, unmitigated, chemical desire. Some of the most irresponsible, unreliable, poverty level washouts often get more sex than any dutiful AFC suffering from a Savior Schema, because there is no obligation.

Reciprocity

In the wild, the law of reciprocity and fair exchange is a fairly obvious one. Most high-order social animals have some innate understanding of exchanging resources. In fact you could argue that pair bonding, family structure and social collectives are for the most part based on this shared exchange arrangement. So it stands to reason that in the course of human evolution we too developed this innate psychological wiring, thus making men prone to seeing it as the shortest distance between what we have and what we want.

The difficulties arise when (perhaps cleverly) women learned to covertly use this  innate psychology of exchange within the context of a social framework that gives them a resource advantage for little or no exchange of their own. Thus women modeled a social norm, that mirrors men’s natural default position of disposability, and put their attentions and intimacies as unassailable resources so valuable that no effort on a man’s part can merit it. When a woman is appalled by the notion that she should be obligated to have sex with a man in exchange for a dinner and a movie (even over multiple occasions), this social convention is the root of that insult.

The Protector Dynamic

Of course the flip side to this argument is the Protector Dynamic which is the natural propensity for a man to want to provide protection for his mate. Over the course of our evolutionary history certain psycho-biological behaviors proved to be beneficial to the survival of our species. Specific hormonal releases prompt different emotions and behavioral reactions as a response to our environments. Women, for instance, produce higher volumes of oxytocin and estrogen thus prompting a natural instinctual feeling of wellbeing and nurturing her children (which also, interestingly enough, is released after female orgasm). The same is true for men. Being generally physically stronger and posessing 17 times the testosterone, men have evolved chemical cocktails of their own and thus feel a natural protection instinct when prompted.

The conflict comes when the AFC confuses this Protector Dynamic with a Savior Schema. The natural feelings derived from his biochemistry only serve to reinforce his Savior mentality and solidify it as part of his personality. Even when a woman’s repeated behavior directly contradicts this notion of reciprocating intimacy for help (or his idea of ‘protection’) the Savior Schema only rationalizes it as being inconsistent with a single, individual woman.

This then is the root of the White Knight schema; exchange protection for intimacy (i.e. sex). And, once again, women cleverly, almost subconsciously so, use this dynamic to arrange a beneficial, but unequal, exchange of resources.

No Preference

There’s nothing like a good internet shit-storm to fire up the inspiration for great manosphere bloggery. As most of my readers are aware I cite Roissy/Heartiste often enough, if not for content then certainly for terminology. If I have one complaint about the Chateau it’s Roissy’s habit of posting a fresh topic about a half an hour before I’m ready to log off for the day and   the comment discussion ends up in becoming an epic struggle between the manospheric forces of reason versus the blathering cut-and-paste canards of the militantly Matrix plugged-in. Such was Friday’s post at the Chateau.

I’m not entirely sure, but my guess would be that Roissy wasn’t expecting the landslide of  commentary (685 responses at last count) his post provoked from the more agitated wing of social crusaders poised to defend any critical analysis of the search term: “Sexual Preference”. Oddly enough, the main thrust of his commentary wasn’t about the alleged ‘asexual preference’ of the girl in his chosen article, but rather the Beta of the Month guy who’d endure and encourage an entirely sexless monogamy to accomodate this little Pixie.

As I’ve noted in many a prior thread, Indignation is a basic requirement for the feminine psyche (and extended to the male feminine identifier’s psyches) – directly or vicariously, in the absence of indignation, women will actively create it for themselves. If you feel like sifting through 685 posts of indignation to understand this, you’ll have an easy time of it by attempting to explain ‘sexual preference’ in a rational manner to the legions of Matrix Plugins. Even when that sexual preference is “none of the above.”

Every Plugin in the comment thread had some pet interest in the orgy of ignorance: Feminists, White Knights, Sexual Preference Crusaders, Rape Culturists, etc. yet the spark of the whole debate was a little rainbow haired girl who volunteered to be interviewed by the BBC about her claims of ‘sexlessness’ and the legitimacy of asexuality as a, presumedly biological, sexual orientation (or non-orientation in the stricter sense). Oh, yeah, and some anonymous herb who chose to repress his sexuality to apease said Pixie.

Accusations of rape culture flew out in the first volley Matrix-speak:

“If she’s not into sex there’s nothing wrong with her. She doesn’t ‘owe’ him sex and if she does so against her will then that’s rape.”

Following up were the appeals to sexual preference and gender identity:

“It’s people like you who demonize and bully people who’s sexual orientation conflicts with your own. You’re what’s wrong with society, you’re scum of the earth.”

Next came the predictable White Knight contingent and their “not-like-other-guys” Beta game mantras:

“Thinking the only way to be intimate with another person is through sexual contact is not only ridiculous but incredibly limiting. I’d be perfectly fine being in a sexless relationship.”

And for the finale, a healthy dose of male shame administered by those lacking the insight to add anything novel:

“If this bothers you, I bet you all have really small cocks.”

Ahem.

What interested me most about this ‘discussion’ wasn’t just the intensity of the responses, but also how quickly and comfortably the Plugins were in their need to set the “troglodytes” straight. You see, in our disconnected lives it’s much more difficult to express our ideology without real-time social repercussions. We can get fired from a job, kicked out of our social circle, excommunicated from church or not be asked back to the lady’s bridge club when we venture a disenting perspective on a great many topics. The Buffer of the internet make that expression much more convenient, but is also fraught with the same risks, albeit more indirectly. This accessibility is also a good indicator of what provokes indignation.

In an era when critical analysis is conflated with political incorrectness it’s interesting to observe what prompts outrage, even if it’s simply token, actionless outrage. As I stated in Enter White Knight:

Every random chump within earshot of your conversation about Game, about your ‘changed’ way of seeing inter-gender relations, about your most objective critical observations of how women ‘are’, etc. – understand, that chump waits everyday for an opportunity to “correct” you in as public a way as he’s able to muster. That AFC who’s been fed on a steady diet of noble intent, with ambitions of endearing a woman’s intimacy through his unique form of chivalry; that guy, he’s aching for an opportunity to prove his quality by publicly redressing a “villain” like you for your chauvinism.

There is such a dearth of critical thought and analysis in society at large that those willing to do so become the immediate targets for the indignation seeking majority of the Matrix. Bloggers such as myself, Roissy, Roosh, Dalrock, Ferd, and a whole host of others, must be exceptionally careful in our anonymity for fear of real-world repercussions for our ideas and our observations. We take on pseudonyms by necessity for fear of an impact to our careers, our families, our personal lives, etc. No feminist blogger need worry about using her real name – their ideas aren’t dangerous, they don’t threaten the feminine imperative’s primacy.

It’s a shock to normalcy when a conflicting idea is expressed, but it’s what the Plugins wait for. It’s their prime opportunity. They perceive it as a test of their ego investments to refute (however lamely) the observations that would challenge their comfortable world view.

Chivalry vs. Altruism

Lonely ships, upon the water / Better save the women and children first.
Sail away with someone’s daughter / Better save the women and children first.

A lot has been made about the recent Costa Concordia shipwreck, and predictably the White Knights and Femcentrists are all tied up in knots about the condition of a society where humans with penises are unwilling less willing* to sacrifice their lives for humans with vaginas. The gravity of  gender dynamics in a potentially life threatening scenario is a fantastic opportunity to illustrate the Male Catch 22;

For the past 60 years feminization has built in the perfect Catch 22 social convention for anything masculine; The expectation to assume the responsibilities of being a man (Man Up) while at the same time denigrating asserting masculinity as a positive (Shut Up). What ever aspect of maleness that serves the feminine purpose is a man’s masculine responsibility, yet any aspect that disagrees with feminine primacy is labeled Patriarchy and Misogyny.

Gender issues in survival situations (greatly exaggerated) aside, I thought I’d take this opportunity to riff a bit on Chivalry.

Chivalry

Chivalry is simply one of many ideologies that was subsumed by westernized romanticism. Chivalry also applied toward things such as not hitting a man while he wasn’t looking or attacking a blatantly undefendable, inferior or even a respected foe. It was originally intended as a code of etheics determined by the Roman Catholic church to control the otherwise lawless and violent natures of soldiers and knights who, understandably, had a tendency for brigandism in the middle ages. What passes for most people’s understanding of chivalry is actually a classic interpretation and bastardization of western romanticisim and the ideologies of ‘courtly love’, which ironically enough was also an effort by the women of the period intended to better control the men of the early and high Renaissance. Essentially it amounted to a taming of the over-dominating masculine influence of the time by laying out a system of prescribed appropriate conditions necessary to satisfy a womans access to her intimacy.

Like today’s push for men to better identify with the feminine, the idea of courtly love was to ‘encourage’ men to explore their feminine sides with odes of divine expressions of love, offerings of fantastic (often life threatening) feats to prove one’s devotion or presenting gifts beyond compare to again prove ones worth and sincerity to the “object” of his desire – her’s being the only gauge for acceptance. The articles of courtly love are actually the inception of our tradition of buying an expensive wedding ring for a woman. And just like the women of today, their behaviors rarely matched their stated intents, but far be it from the objective eye to cast a doubt upon them for fear of social ostracization.

I’ll open doors for old women, my mother, my wife, my daughter and any other woman I happen to get to the door at the same time with, not because I have some intrinsic need to dominate the vaginas of the world, but because it’s my habit. Rituals don’t make a man what he is, but his character, confidence and bearing. We call something ‘courteous’ beacuse of this ‘courtly’ dynamic, but it’s the Man behind the courtesy that makes the difference. I don’t think twice about helping a man or a woman carry a heavy load, nor do I care what sex the person is I may help fix a flat tire.

One of the primary elements of charity is that if you expect any compensation for the act, it isn’t charity. I’ve stated in the past that women lack a fundamental capacity to appreciate the sacrifices Men must make in order to facilitate their feminine-centric reality. However, to take this one step further, Men need to be aware from the outset that any efforts they make will NOT be appreciated as being extraordinary. In the feminine centric reality, your sacrifices are a prescribed expectations and normalized – you’re supposed to ‘do the right thing’, and that right thing is always to promote the feminine imperative. So with this in mind, and within the social framework established by the feminine imperative, it serves a Man best to presume that any effort he makes will go entirely thankless.

Does that sound like a raw deal? It sure as hell does to me, but that’s the reward-center wiring my brain is prone to. It makes little sense to paint a masterpiece that no one but yourself will ever see, but yet here I am putting paint to canvas – why?  Feminism may have killed chivalry, but it still hasn’t touched the paradox of altruism.

Altruism

There are many examples in the natural world of what appears to be altruism, but the motivations behind the altruistic behavior are what gives it away. Meerkats live in a cooperative community and post guards to lookout for potential threats to that community. It’s common practice among these lookout Meerkats to sound a warning loud enough to alert the clan, but also specifically to draw attention to themselves. They often make no effort for self-preservation and allow themselves to be killed in order to forestall a predator and give time for the greater whole of the community members to reach safety.

This may appeal to our sense of morality as an altruistic act of self-sacrifice, but it’s really one example of species preservation among higher order animals. I read about a soldier falling on the grenade in Iraq and there are many other similar stories of exactly this same act in other conflicts throughout history. And while I can’t say for certain what a man’s personal reasons were for self-sacrifice, I do know the function for which the behavior occurs – sacrifice for the greater good. One dies so that a majority do not, makes for an efficient preservation of the whole. A bee stings, perhaps without knowing it will kill him, in order to preserve the collective. It’s written into it’s biology to react to threats in such a way. For the same reason I sincerely doubt that a soldier throwing himself on a grenade would have any premeditated concept of sacrifice for a whole. Nor would I say the guy gave any forethought, much less had the time to do so, to contemplate who in the group had kids to live for or assessing the individual value of their existence, or thinking he would live on in infamy – he just reacted.

Often what we call acts of courage, heroism, cowardice, or even greed are little more than necessary behaviors of what a particular condition demands of us. We can afford the luxury to call these behaviors what we’d like after the fact, but often we don’t have the time to contemplate the consequences of our reaction – we just do things autonomously sometimes. A soldier has 5-10 seconds to react to a live grenade, but we’ve got a lifetime to define what heroism is.

It’s in light of this reactionary altruism that I believe Men, more than women, have an innate capacity for self-sacrifice. In a life or death context this is an easy illustration, but in everyday life, the choices we make and the habits we take for granted stem from this hard-wired altruism. Let me make it clear that from a philosophical standpoint I don’t subscribe to the idea of selfless altruism: even if just on a subconscious level, we all do things with some expectation of reciprocity or reward. There’s a martyr in every Man that thinks his sacrifice will earn him accolades of pussy. When you can get a 16 year old boy to strap explosives to his body with the promise of 70 virgins in heaven, then you’ll begin to understand altruism from a male perspective.

Enter White Knight

Bear in mind that what we think of as chivalry today is a bastardization of the initial concept courtesy of Hollywood and romanicizations. Also consider that our popular concept of chivalry is a westernized idea that almost exclusively applied to the landed aristocracy of western Europe during the middle ages. The original, latent purpose of chivalry was to hold wealthy men accountable to the Holy Roman Empire and not kill each other or resort to banditry as was common at the time of it’s inception.

White Knghts and ‘liberated men’ who voluntarily serve the feminine imperative make a common mistake in associating ‘chivalrous’ behavior with westernized romanticism. The concept of Courtly Love, what would later be referred to as “Romance”, actually began with aristocratic women playing “romantic games” amongst themselves and a series of suitors – generally while their noblemen husbands were away on some military campaign. The contests would be tests of devotion, sometimes writing sonnets or poetry, other times it may’ve been slowly bleeding to death to prove their affections. Obviously taken to the extreme this had it’s downside, but the “games” took root in society and have evolved over the course of history.

I’m not saying being ‘chivalrous’ doesn’t have it’s uses, but like any gift or attention, the more a Man applies it the sooner it loses it’s appeal. See it for what it’s become, and what it began from.

The Rush

For today’s post we’re going to do a little experiment. Before you press the play button, take a deep breath, and while it is work-safe, you may want to plug your headphones in or be in someplace where you can be uninterrupted for 10 minutes. Be forewarned that any women within casual listening distance will likely be provoked to indefensible, yet hysterical defense of the sisterhood after eavesdropping. Pay attention to your heart rate and do quick self assessment of your mood. As you listen to this, be aware of the chemical reaction percolating in your bloodstream as the inevitable end comes. Then be aware of how you physically feel afterwards. Ok, press play.

 

All done? How was that for you? Heart rate up?

 

I must admit, I got an adrenaline rush out of that. Kind of like watching a car wreck in slow motion. However, I find that kind of ironic since any number of daytime shows (i.e. Tyra Banks, et. al.) have been basically doing the same shit for decades now. A lot of guys acknowledge the power of the chemical rush, but it’s only episodes like this that make it real for them. I’m sure most of the guys hearing this felt it; the high of adrenaline, endorphins, dopamine, etc., this is the chemical cocktail that women come to crave. I’ve read the chemical profile is very similar to that of heroin. Indignation triggers it for women in the same way sex and death trigger it for Men.

The main reason I wanted to pick this apart is because there’s a lot of elements to the whole incident. There’s so much at play in this, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s interesting to read the responses to gauge what impacts people first. Women naturally lean toward the guy being classless for opting to hash this out in a very public forum, yet it feel fully justified for doing it themselves for decades. White Knights will come out of the woodwork to defend the indefensible in spite of the circumstance responding viscerally to a woman weeping. How did you feel when you heard the girl cry? We can pour through the reasons why the guy was a chump to have been living with her for as long as he did, but think of this more from the perspective of the physical effect it has upon the listeners.

Funny how even when a woman confesses to her infidelity we’ll look for ANY angle available to still cast her in the victim’s role. We’ll readily analyze the guy’s history, we’ll euphemize her misconduct as a “mistake” (or she’ll do it for us), and we’ll speculate “where her heart is really at.”

 

“but, Rollo, dumping the hor in private would have achieved the same end.”


I’m not so sure about that. I’ll be the first to advocate against revenge, but for pragmatic reasons (wasted effort), not so guys can cling to some self-righteous high ground. If the guy is resolved to break it off with her, and he has the opportunity to rub it in (on valentines day, caught red handed, thinking a proposal is due, etc.), but instead holds back and discreetly pulls up stakes, does it have the same impact? Would she genuinely appreciate the gesture? How would she ever know that he could’ve resorted to publicly humiliating her yet chose not to?

The guy opting for the “high-road” would be the only one capable of appreciating what he could’ve done if he hadn’t, and even his expressing his option to do so makes him sound vain and conceited. By all rights this woman was under the impression that he was going to propose to her on-air and was utterly crushed instead. How does a woman spared from this ever make that kind of acknowledgement?

The answer is she doesn’t. I’m not saying he should’ve done it, but in light of the life-altering gravity of entering into as binding a commitment as marriage (a topic of much discussion in the manosphere), I can understand why he’d consider it. We can call him a chump for living with the woman for 5 years, but he’s a chump who’d made the decision to commit and had the ring to prove his intent. She on the other hand, knew he’d decided to enter into this commitment, and not only betrayed that, but KNOWINGLY, and happily, was ready to let him propose in spite of herself.

 

“Is justice somehow rendered as “less than justice” when it is administered by your OWN HAND?”

 

Therein lies the rub. There will always exist an element of bias (revenge) whenever one enacts what they perceive as justice. Women are almost universally absolved of this. Carrie Underwood can write a chart topping song about vandalizing the truck of a cheating lover that women (and men) will gleefully memorize the lyrics and sing along with, but let a man publicly humiliate a caught-in-the-act, cheating lover and “he’s less of a man” and runs the risk of having his personal life ruined as a result.

As far as this guy breaking Iron Rule #4; yes, the guy’s a fool for having done so for 3 years, and I’d go so far as to say an even bigger fool for being monogamous with a solitary woman for 5 years during his prime (I assume Chris was in his 20’s). My point was to illustrate his degree of commitment (he bought a ring) not to justify his having lived with her as long as he did. Contrast this incident with Tiger Woods situation: a lot has been made about commitment being tantamount to male virtue, so my emphasis was his readiness to commit and the gravity it bears on a man’s life.

There was another aspect that I hadn’t considered in this. I don’t entirely believe that reversing the roles to understand a contrast would be applicable in this case. Generally women don’t ask men to marry them. I understand it happens, but never to the degree that a man must prepare to make a proposal of marriage. Chris had resolved in his mind to marry the girl, and acted on this resolve by buying a ring and planning to propose on V-Day. Men are the True Romantics; Women simply do not have a parallel experience for this.

I understand this is a bit of a stretch, but for a moment lets assume Chris knew exactly the future liabilities of his commitment – all of those high-road, morally binding liabilities Tiger reneged on in his marriage – should his response to her deception be any less measured than what he did when you think of what he’d almost committed to?

Think of the impact his commitment to her would’ve entailed; think of how it would effect their families, his career and / or educational opportunities, their future children and their personal decisions, his finances, his psychological well being, their quality of life, and the list goes on, but essentially he was betting his future life on this girl. The guy was a hair’s breadth from making that commitment when he discovered the deception. I think she got off rather lightly.

 

*I’ve got to give props to the guys over at the BodyBuilding.com forums for rediscovering this link for me. I had originally used this audio in a SoSuave forum post back in February of 2010 and lost the audio link. Thanks guys.