Greetings everyone,
As you well know by now, Tuesdays is Regular Contributor Days here at J4G, and today we have a new member to add to the team; one Ms. Stephanie Shepard! Ms. Shepard has been all over the place, most notably Thought Catalog and The Burning Platform, and has come aboard at our personal request, for we feel she adds quite a bit of spice to the pot. Below is a piece she’s previously written elsewhere online, but we felt it falls right into the pocket of what we normally discuss here at Just Four Guys. It’s a topic that, I am sure, will generate much spirited discussion.
Please, put your hands together and join me in welcoming, Ms. Stephanie Shepard!
***Tit- for-tat is the most effective strategy in game theory. The concept is used in a game to either advance two competing players or regress their progress based off of calibrated actions. If one player acts aggressive towards another, the other player will return the same aggression, bringing about a stale mate. The stale mate will continue until one player reverses the course with a calibrated action. If both players act in a calibrated effort together, they will advance forward. Ultimately enhancing their own chances of winning and enhance their opponents chances of winning. Both players get closer to winning faster than competing aggressively, and undergoing many set backs. If both players act aggressively and prolong a stale mate, neither opponents will win.
Much of this can be applied to attraction, relationships, and filtering of suitors. The dating world is built upon the most important and most rigorous competition in human life. You have two completely different genders, with different motivations, with the havoc of everyday life to figure out. All are openly competing and playing by their own rules. Both sexes have a goal in the dating world. Making the game more complex, each have multiple competitors of the same gender. Though their goals vary depending on the person, in the bigger picture all are driven by the same human instinct, to find the best mate and have off spring. No amount of feminism, evolution of birth control, or defining of the modern gender roles will change that instinct.
Tit-for-tat is the only strategy that I have used where I have found success within dating. Most dating books are based off of the opinions of a one sided argument. What one sex wants, blaming the other gender for denying their desires, and advocating emotional manipulation to get what they want. Books such as The Rules, The Game, Art of Seduction, and Men Love Bitches have been bringing a fair amount of pain to both genders. Each of these books encourage emotional manipulation and preying on insecurities. The goal for women is to get men to commit. The goal for men is to get sex. All of this advice has left both sides more confused, bitter, and broken hearted.
The reason none of these books are accurate is naive perceptions and limited capability of understanding of attraction. Both genders paint themselves as superior and thus allow themselves to manipulate the other sex. They see the opposite sex as the great enemy that only wants to use them for personal gain. So they teach the victim mentality and actually discourage self contemplation. Actively ignoring self improvement to find the best partner. If dating books actually told the truth they would be out of business. The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves. Both genders have the same ultimate goal, but strive for it in different ways. Men love sex, but also want commitment. Women love commitment, but also want sex. Each of us want both, with the best person we can find.
This is where game theory comes to the rescue. It is non-manipulative and keeps things balanced in a non-hyper escalating way. There is no way for either gender to take advantage of the other without consequences. Attraction has to start and be evenly escalated by both sexes. If not, efforts of both parties will be reverted to the previous agreed upon point. It has helped me avoid men with low interest. It has helped me realized if potential suitors are motivated by boredom, loneliness, or just seeking sex. For men it is the ultimate protection from women desperately trying to trick them into marriage and unplanned pregnancy.
The concept is really simple. First you establish an attraction signal to someone you find attractive. The most nonthreatening signal is eye contact. My best trick is to scan a room until I meet eyes with a man who is also scanning the room. Making eye contact is the most effective way of expressing interest. It is the most vulnerable signal in the game of attraction. So much information is processed in a short time frame. Based on how long the eye contact is met depends on initial attraction. If attraction is mutual, curiosity of that signal invites more eye contact between both parties. Frequency and duration of eye contact is the quickest way to evaluate mutual attraction.
Now with tit-for-tat, once I make eye contact with a man more than once, I wait to gauge his interest. He will either initiate more eye contact or not at all. This is pretty much a pass/fail tactic. If he returns more eye contact, I will return more eye contact. If he advances the eye contact, I will reciprocate further based on his advance. If he changes body positioning and distances himself it sends a clear signal of disinterest. The technique works the same way for both sexes. A guy can also use eye contact and evaluate his prospect with the same accuracy.
There are some basic signals of attraction that both genders exhibit in the first stages:
1. Eye Contact.
2. Frequently smiling while maintaining eye contact.
3. Signs of nervousness and being speechless.
4. Breaking the touch barrier.
5. Breaking the “get to know you better” barrier.
While using game theory you can escalate or return each of the signals of attraction. They don’t have to be in any specific order. The importance is paying attention to those around you, giving these signals, and deciding how you want to reciprocate. All of these signals can openly be displayed without fear of real rejection. You can not prove that the girl across the room smiling at you is not interested. Smile back and if she keeps smiling, then she has some attraction toward you. If that guy you like accidentally brushes past your arm, there is no way to prove it was on purpose. If he does it twice, it is a clear invite to be touched back.
The beauty of tit-for-tat is limited rejection. Someone could of course not be attracted, but their body language will give it away long before you make a fool of yourself. If they do reject you, tit-for-tat limits the effect of that rejection. You don’t have to confess your long harbored feelings, nor come on strong for sex. If you are not interested in the person sending the signal, you just don’t return it. You don’t have to deem the person as creepy or crazy, just avoid eye contact and don’t smile at them. Most people won’t even realize they were rejected, they will just have some self doubt if they read the initial signal wrong. People have a tendency to accidentally cross signals all the time.
Tit-for-tat is just for reading signals and returning them based on frequency. It can be slow and take time. Or it can be one of those crazy bursts of attraction that both parties escalate quickly. If you exchange a few signals and it stalls, then you can just keep exchanging the same levels of attraction previously agreed upon. If the other party stops making eye contact, you stop making eye contact. If they stop flirting, you stop flirting. Eventually that initial attraction will naturally die out or it will be picked up again at a later time. Declining interest breaks the tit-for-tat momentum until it is rekindled by either party. If it is never rekindled you can just move on without wondering what happened. There was an initial attraction that faded. If that attraction is continuously returned and escalated you both win.***
You can read an expanded version of Ms. Shepard’s piece here and discuss both “mixes” in the comments below!
Tagging…
O.
An important attraction signal is the squint. It is precisely sexual and may be used to distinguish between platonic and sexual attraction. There are other signals which cannot be faked which I posted about at http://theasdgamer.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/is-she-into-you-indicators-of-interest/. We cannot assume good faith in the SMP, so it’s better to rely on autonomic signals.
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
Um, no. As a competent man, really there aren’t any women who hold a candle to me in any significant dimensions, so I certainly have never bothered looking for the Best Unicorn to even come close to equaling me at my *best*. All I wanted was a woman who wouldn’t get so weird all the time like other women, and who wouldn’t treat me like other women do.
The genders are not symmetrical, especially in culpability for poor choices and poor relationships. My shorthand for this idea is the Princess among all the Frog Princes. The Princess is sad because there are just too many Frogs in the world and she doesn’t feel like kissing any of them. The Prince is sad because the Princess just sees a bunch a frogs.
In fact, the genders are partially antisymmetrical, i.e. symplectic not symmetric, braided inseparably.
“Attraction has to start and be evenly escalated by both sexes.”
Must be nice to live in whatever land you live in, where women escalate things at all, much less evenly. I never see this; I never see women escalating things, merely responding yea or nay to some man’s escalations.
Oh! I understand now. Requiring a man to wait until a woman is equally attracted is just yet another way to ensure that only the 20% of men get any shot at trying for women. It’s a way of making sure the 80% of unwanted men sit on the sidelines until some woman escalates things or *initiates* something with him (meanwhile, all the men, both the 20% and the 80%, are laughing out loud at the idea that any woman is going to exhibit attraction to one of the 80%).
“3. Signs of nervousness and being speechless.”
Nope, total opposite time. Not picking btw, I’m always like this. The few times I’ve had any successes with women, I was very talkative and totally relaxed and in control; the situation was proceeding exactly as it should have. And the women those few times, in contrast to the usual nervous bitchiness women give to me all the time, were nice and warm and talkative.
@jf12
Stop being contrary as if you do not understand the concept. If you are having trouble I advise clicking on the bottom like which is written by a red pill follower fellow writer I have collaborated with in the past. Here is the link if you are too stubborn and lazy to scroll up. 20/80…Psh…
http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2013/12/game-theory-and-game-theory.html
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
Equal how? Attraction attributes? Intelligence? Favorite mode of reasoning? Strength? Emotional Stability? Biology? Susceptibility to STD’s?
“The concept is really simple.”
I love lamp.
#7 I’m not merely contrary, I have many aspects of my personality.
SS@12
Is your response to jf12 an example of tit-for-tat, or something more equal than that? love the condescension by the way, a predictable response to challenging a false premise. Just lovely.
@The3rd
How can you compare 20/80 to the Prisoners Dilemma? Not to mention imperfect information. It is also condescending to nit pick trivial points. Also, my article is not congruent with red pill/ manosphere theories.
@jf12
You are being contrary. 4 comments in a row? really? Makes me question the extent of bias you have.
Another thing that is going on is that men frequently have several sets going on at the same time and women may as well, so the strategy can get very complicated. Potentially, one conversation may affect several people. So, a one-to-one model of game theory has limited use.
Did you mean assortative mating when you wrote about seeking a partner equal to our own best selves?
@ SS 12
4 comments in a row? really? Makes me question the extent of bias you have.
He does that a lot all the time. You aren’t getting special treatment.
@ jf12 4
You are quite correct that tit-for-tat doesn’t work in high energy situations like a bar where you have multiple men competing for a woman’s attention at the same time, some of whom might not be employing a tit-for-tat strategy.
@theasdgamer
“Did you mean assortative mating when you wrote about seeking a partner equal to our own best selves?
No particularly. When I say seeking our equals there are broad definition of an equal. Some find dating amongst their religion or ethnicity important. Some seeking out similarities regarding intelligence or humor. Some seek out their equals look wise. I meant that as a smaller point within the article.
Many of the premises are faulty. Ironically, she indicts the narrow and manipulative nature of much dating advice (which I completely agree with), while then claiming the genders are competitors.
“You have two completely different genders…”
Actually they are more similar than different. Gender is one of the last things to be determined as the fetus develops in the womb. And we have almost all the same organs. Even sex organs are quite similar. The clitoris corresponds to the penis, the labia to the scrotum, etc.
“…with different motivations…”
Motivations vary by individual, not by gender. If I want quick sex and a girl wants quick sex, we have the same motivation. Also motivations can change; a “good girl” can be seduced into a one night stand, and so on.
“Making the game more complex, each have multiple competitors of the same gender.”
Not necessarily. If you define a niche for yourself, you can dominate that and minimize or in some cases eliminate competition from other members of your gender.
“No amount of feminism, evolution of birth control, or defining of the modern gender roles will change that instinct.”
Maybe not the instinct. But culture has had and continues to have a tremendous impact on people’s actual dating and sexual behavior, as well as their preferences. Radically varying standards of beauty across countries and over time are the most obvious example.
Re: signals. Individuals vary widely in their shyness, confidence, social skills, nervousness, etc. Also, introduce cultural diversity into the mix (like in any big city), and it’s even harder to make these assumptions.
“The beauty of tit-for-tat is limited rejection.”
Well, nobody likes to feel rejected, but I have serious doubts about strategies that are based largely on the desire to avoid rejection.
The woman’s perspective is one thing, but for men, the ability to deal with rejection is actually an important aspect of becoming more attractive and getting the best results you can.
Sometimes life sucks and you don’t get what you want. Courageous men accept that and act anyway, again and again.
And ironically, in order to get really good at dealing with these signals smoothly and consistently, you will have to take action and fail lots of times to get experience.
@theasdgamer
“You are quite correct that tit-for-tat doesn’t work in high energy situations like a bar”
I never said that at all. I came up with using tit-for-tat in dating and attraction while working in a bar as a waitress then bartender. A bar is the prime time to use tit-for-tat. While working at a bar I became hyper aware of the sexual attraction signals being sent back and forth. I would have never put attraction and game theory in the same scope without the bar scenerio.
“He does that a lot all the time. You aren’t getting special treatment.”
My apologies jf12.
@Introverted Playboy
“Well, nobody likes to feel rejected, but I have serious doubts about strategies that are based largely on the desire to avoid rejection.”
There is no rejection protection. But you can limit its impact and not be surprised. If a woman is not showing interested in eyes contact or conversation after an attempt or two, it really is not hard to figure out she is not interested. But to keep trying can result in a harsher rejection as oppose to paying attention of attraction signals.
Stephanie #20
You’re not wrong. But there is also more to the story.
Sometimes pushing just a little bit past that initial apparent lack of interest or neutrality can result in magic. Check out Justin Wayne’s infield videos on Youtube to see what I mean (of course he takes it to a slightly extreme level).
Also persistence and conveying lust and desire for the girl can generate attraction on its own.
I think this is a very tenable strategy for night game, where girls expect to get hit on and expect guys to do crazy and unusual things.
There are a lot of guys that need to experience a harsh rejection or two to really get a sense of what is possible and where the actual boundaries are.
@ IP
This is about as meaningful as saying we share 90% of our DNA with cats.
@IP
It probably would have different results between night and day game. If a guy was persistent at night it would be a huge turn off. But if a guy kept trying to initiate during the day it would have a more positive effect.
Nemesis 22:
Sharing 90% of our DNA with cats is pretty meaningful when it comes to drug and medical research.
Anyway, dismiss it if you want, but anybody who knows how to work a clitoris (not saying that I’m an expert at it) knows the effect for a woman is as intense or more intense than penile stimulation for a man. The female lust for physical pleasure and orgasms does not jibe with the traditional narrative that “men want sex and women want love” and so on.
Stephanie 23:
It really depends. It depends on context, the personality of the girl, her recent experiences with men approaching her, how good-looking and good-smelling the guy is, etc.
The same guy who for one girl is “persistent and ballsy” for another girl will be “creepy and annoying.”
“Both sexes have a goal in the dating world. Making the game more complex, each have multiple competitors of the same gender. Though their goals vary depending on the person, in the bigger picture all are driven by the same human instinct, to find the best mate and have off spring. No amount of feminism, evolution of birth control, or defining of the modern gender roles will change that instinct.”
Visibly not so much of the time. Many, many women now behave in a manner that clearly makes it certain that they will never have a husband with whom they have children. From delaying willingness to accept commitment from any of the men who move towards offering it until they are far post-Wall/age-barren, to having personalities as pleasant as a constantly-spraying skunk crossed with a porcupine, to pushing for customs/laws/regulations under which no man with anything to lose could rationally have sex with them (let alone commit to them), to all the women trying out lesbianism — no, I can’t find that remotely universal about U.S. women now, not at all. Just look at all the women with short hair, who are proud to say that they would never do housework or cook, etc.. That’s not how a woman attracts a man for sex, let alone commitment long enough to raise children to maturity. (If the latter’s not done, then the mating doesn’t count, as the kids didn’t get to continue the genetic chain.) .
Wait a minute. So she’s saying that „The Game” and the „Art of Seduction” are destructive towards both „genders” and leave them „more confused, bitter, and broken hearted” without exception? Is this meant to be some joke?
By the way, let’s not get carried away with the usual mainstream rethoric. Let’s examine the facts. What percent of men „paint themselves as superior and thus allow themselves to manipulate the other sex” and „see the opposite sex as the great enemy that only wants to use them for personal gain”? What percent of women do the same? Think about that.
„The dating world is built upon the most important and most rigorous competition in human life.”
Yeah. This perfectly explains why a growing segment of Western women are overweight, slovenly, insufferable broads knowing nothing about how to attract men and showing no willingness whatsoever to do something about it. It also explains why a growing segment of Western men believe that improving their computer gaming skills is a better idea than seeking interaction with their female peers.
Let’s discuss practice. Suppose an average beta chump walks into a room where both men and women are present in considerable numbers. How is he supposed to have success implementing this game theory stuff? Seek eye contact and then…what?
It strikes me that this strategy is standard for women, but is not really designed for the male. Even if she makes eye contact, she is still expecting the male to come over to her, initiate conversation and observe her reaction. She is merely going to respond agreeably if she likes the guy. This seems par for the course to me.
@ SS 19
“You are quite correct that tit-for-tat doesn’t work in high energy situations like a bar”
I never said that at all.
And I never said that you did. My comment was directed at jf12.
A bar is the prime time to use tit-for-tat.
So, if one man is using TFT and another is using hyper-escalation (HE) on a woman, then what outcomes are likely? Isn’t HE more effective and won’t the TFT man lose the competition in all likelihood? Won’t the woman ignore the man using TFT, ceteris paribus? There is a reason that alphas use HE–it gives great outcomes when sex is the goal.
@jf12,
Must be nice to live in whatever land you live in, where women escalate things at all, much less evenly.
I apparently live in the same land as Stephanie, as the women I dated were certainly active in escalation. So have the other women I’ve observed – when a woman is interested in a man you can tell.
I never see this; I never see women escalating things, merely responding yea or nay to some man’s escalations.
Female escalation tends to be less obvious than male escalation since women tend to take the responsive role rather than the initiating role. But the responsive role should not be confused with no role – it is certainly not the null state. It is a discernible set of behaviors that contribute to advancing the relationship.
@Ms. Stephanie:
Quite a presentation you have here! I’m sure the J4G regulars will have their own questions, but I’d like to pose a few and have a bit of back and forth on some of what you’ve said here.
First, I’d like to ask you about the book, which is really a memoir, “The Game” – have you read it, and if so, could you please tell the forum specifically what you found problematic about it? You used terms like “manipulative”, and I would like to know what, exactly was “manipulative” about what is written in The Game? Any other problems you have with The Game, please list them out for us? Thanks!
O.
At first I thought there must be error in the analysis which lead to the author’s conclusions. After reading again a couple of time I get the sense none of this applies to the average man. Only the top 20% will benefit from this in a tangible way. For the rest of us interesting but not terribly helpful.
Women escalate? Nope. Not with the average man.
#33 my thought too. It’s the apex fallacy.
I can only imagine what it would be like to be a man to whom women were attracted, in which I didn’t have to gin up everything from scratch myself. It would help us ordinary a lot if women’s libidos were higher which would cause women to desire more men, but that’s not the case.
I’m certain tft *is* a great strategy for women to screen out men, which means it isn’t great for screened-out men. Period. That can’t be said to be a difficult thought.
During a rare time in which a woman is showing any interest at all in a usually-wunwanted man, the ONLY strategy that works for him is to strike while the iron is hot. See the previous “Window” article. He has to go for it, make his move, as smoothly powerful as he can muster.
I didn’t read the comments so someone may have already pointed this out.
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.
This is false. This is the mans agenda. For women, hypergamy is the order of the day.
From the “Woman’s Window” article
“Whereas men are always scanning and weighing women in the balance and many of them are found not wanting, women are NOT scanning and are not interested in the men around them, even in some that they could be interested if the right things happened.
Now, of course, the highly attractive man can break through her haze and trigger attraction and make her actively want him.”
IOW of course women want to play tit-for-tat with Tom Brady.
Swing and a miss! Good effort but you are missing 2 vital components to make tit for tat work. First of all, the entire dynamic is based on women’s best friend (besides that furry hamster): plausible deniablilty. Guy looks at woman, woman looks at man, man approaches ( we will talk about this part in a moment too ) and if the guy isn’t as ___ as she wants upon closer inspection ” I wasn’t looking at you, I was looking past you. Don’t flatter yourself “. She gets off on technicalities where as he has just been rejected. But the premise would still theoretically work if… Women approached men as much as men approach women ( told you I was going to bring it up lol.)
Tit for tats big flaw is the onus is still on the guy to approach. That one aspect is by far the biggest advantage one could have in this environment. But because women hate the idea of approaching men ( exceptions are apex alphas like celebrities ), almost the entire premise of your theory is practically moot. If women were to approach in equal number and with the same that men do, 90% of guys gripes in the SMP would disappear. But due to Hypergamy, that’s a pipe dream at best. So after reading this entire article, I have wonder how this game theory is any different than what women currently do now. Smile, make eye contact, and expect the other party to do the heavy lifting because the majority of women have doubled down on the L’Oréal line ” because I’m worth it”.
It is funny, or sad, to think that a woman would believe a bunch of men were capably of sympathizing with her scanning the room trying to find someone, anyone who might be interested in her. What is this called, this reverse projection, this me-too stuff?
What happens in reality is that the men scan, seeking some woman who isn’t too terribly repulsed, who will sit still long enough for him to make his pitch.
Same variety*
Sexual economic being as it is, the mating game is asymmetrical. Moreover one player, the woman, is significantly more irrational, more unpredictable, and more punitive ih her behavior. A huge portion of her “play” strategy is “No.”
“If both players act in a calibrated effort together, they will advance forward.”
If a man can get a woman to cooperate at all, he has already won. The whole of picking up is based on empirical techniques field-proven to maximize the chance of him getting her to change her behavior from noncooperative to cooperative.
@jf12 41
+1000
The weaknesses of the TFT strategy that I have seen so far are:
1) the assumption that the sexes are equal in mating opportunity (women have a great advantage here),
2) the assumption that there is no feedback from behavior (where TFT is implemented) into attractiveness (which affects the effectiveness of TFT) and
3) that the sexes are uniform (no alpha/beta distribution).
@ Badpainter 33
+1000
The author needs to revisit the perspective of most men (most of whom are probably not in bars but are playing videogames or hunting or watching sports).
You have two completely different genders, with different motivations, with the havoc of everyday life to figure out. All are openly competing and playing by their own rules.
True. Men and women are frenemies (at best). Each sex has its own agenda and goals that only partially overlap with the other. Biologically both should have a common interest in cooperating to produce viable offspring, but contemporary society has been remarkably successful in suppressing the reproductive instinct in both sexes. Without that common goal, there are perhaps more points of conflict than agreement.
Most dating books are based off of the opinions of a one sided argument. What one sex wants, blaming the other gender for denying their desires, and advocating emotional manipulation to get what they want.
This is also true. Much of the dating advice is polarized according to the agenda and goals of one sex or the other. This is also true of gender/dating/sex websites, which are similarly polarized. On one hand you have the feminist and gynocentric websites promulgating the interests of women and shaming the interests of men. On the other you have the red-pill sites, which tend to the opposite.
Tit- for-tat is the most effective strategy in game theory. The concept is used in a game to either advance two competing players or regress their progress based off of calibrated actions.
That assumes both sides agree on what “winning” consists of. If this is not the case, then a stalemate may ensue, with each side undermining the other’s progress.
Biologically and traditionally, “winning” for both sexes consisted in producing viable offspring. However, reproduction does not seem to be the dominant motivating factor in today’s SMP, as few of the male or the female participants are acting on a near term reproductive agenda. Without a common definition of “winning”, the game may be unwinnable, “tit for tat” or other strategies not withstanding.
Where women fail most miserably at this game is not Step 1
1. Eye contact with a man you find attractive who is available
Women fail at Step 0
0. Find an available man attractive
Ref: Obsidian’s speed dating articles.
After clicking on the link to didactsreach, I can appreciate the use of actual game theory. I thought “game theory” in the J4G title was referring to game (as in attraction/dating) and, as I read it I realized “hey, she’s applying actual game theory here”. I have a huge interest in game theory and would love to see more of it used to analyze attraction, dating and relationships.
I may be wrong but I think some readers may have done what I initially did, confuse Game with game theory. I think there may be promise in what she is doing but some articles on understanding game theory first might be a good way to broach this subject. (Then again, I’m new to commenting here and I may have missed any articles that did this.)
According to the linked article, the advice apparently was proffered to an attractive introvert man, the kind who gets nervous around other people. Roughly speaking these steps, I guess, were supposed to minimize his tendency to sabotage himself in the presence of women who are already attracted to him.
That’s fine, albeit limited. First, as we’ve been hammering, most women do not find most men attractive enough. Not up for discussion. Second, for an unattractive man the ONLY thing he has going for him is his unique personality, which is obliterated in the passivity of tft. Third, as we’ve also been hammering, what actually works best for men is Game: immediately escalate, push past resistance, pull away after some success, repeat ad nauseum.
@33 Badpainter;
After reading again a couple of time I get the sense none of this applies to the average man. Only the top 20% will benefit from this in a tangible way.
True, but who is in the 20% is context dependent. Even the average man may find a niche where he’s in the top 20%.
The author’s example is the bar scene, which does not work well for the average man. But there are other venues for meeting women that may better suit his strengths. Personal example: I never once got laid from meeting a woman at a bar, because I am not tall, handsome and extroverted. But I got laid by an attractive musicology major who was impressed by my knowledge of classical composers. In the tiny niche of “men who know classical composers”, I apparently was in her top 20%.
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves. Both genders have the same ultimate goal”
False.
And, if that were true, the game of attraction would be irrelevant.
“For men it is the ultimate protection from women desperately trying to trick them into marriage and unplanned pregnancy.”
No it isn’t. Most women acting this way will come on strongly to a beta who is starved for attention from a woman. That beta will take what he can get. So tit for tat isn’t going to work in that situation.
The ultimate protection for an unsuspecting beta from a woman seeking Beta Bucks is self-respect.
@ Stephanie Shepherd:
“For men it is the ultimate protection from women desperately trying to trick them into marriage and unplanned pregnancy.”
Thank you for your more or less explicit acknowledgment that Alpha Fux, Beta Bucks DOES exist.
By YOUR OWN admission, there IS such a thing as a woman seeking a man for little other than for his money, for status, and for the parenting of child(ren) who may or may not be his.
@jf12 48;
First, as we’ve been hammering, most women do not find most men attractive enough. Not up for discussion.
That’s the wrong criterion. Most women find some men attractive enough, and a look around shows that they’re not all picking from the top 20%. Every time I go to Walmart I see plenty of couples where both are bottom 20% material.
“my article is not congruent with red pill””
It’s also not congruent with the world out there, if you care about that kind of thing.
Stephanie #17
“I meant that as a smaller point within the article.”
You cant dismiss the importance of that point when you say “the truth is”, and you’re using that truth to demonstrate why everyone else is wrong and you’re right.
If you have truth you can’t be vague about it, and you can’t minimize it when questioned about it.
Or, well, you can, but then you can’t be taken seriously.
Hollenhound#28,
LOL
Beta attempts eye contact. Beta cries inside.
@ Stephanie Shepherd:
“A bar is the prime time to use tit-for-tat. While working at a bar I became hyper aware of the sexual attraction signals being sent back and forth. I would have never put attraction and game theory in the same scope without the bar [scenario].”
If that’s the case, then the TFT strategy as stated and set forth here promotes hookup culture. It’s perfect for women who want to advertise their availability to cads and players. TFT also supports the notion that a man must be bold and aggressive, and go for what he wants.
Consider your average woman in a group at a bar. She makes eye contact with a man. Eye contact is exchanged. The man turns out to be a player or player wannabe, as are most men who frequent bars and who are scoping and sensitive to women making eye contact. Using TFT, he finishes the eye contact and swoops in. He will close the deal quickly or move on.
TFT does nothing to “screen”. It doesn’t weed out players or cads; but instead encourages them. So, when I think about it, TFT is really just a nice, HUS-approved way of endorsing garden variety Game.
A visual definition of “dogpile”.
The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves. Both genders have the same ultimate goal
Biologically, both sexes have the same ultimate goal of perpetuating their genes. However, they both have several different strategies for doing so, many of which have nothing to do with finding “the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
Long term pair bonding is just one mating strategy. Women can choose “alpha fux / beta bux” or “independent” single motherhood. Men can pursue pump-n-dump cad behavior or sneaky fucker mating.
It would be more accurate to say that “we all want to find the best partner suitable to our own self interest”.
Theasdgamer, #30
“There is a reason that alphas use HE–it gives great outcomes when sex is the goal.”
Slutty girls also use hyper escalation and it trumps TFT girls.
When it doesn’t work there’s always a drunk beta chubby to save them from free falling. Lucky for them.
In practice:
– Girls hate Slutty girl’s for doing FE and taking all the available men.
– Any girl telling an alpha to TFT is just shit testing him in the style of “no sex tonite” and wants him to FE
– Any girl telling a beta to TFT is soft rejecting him
What this post is doing is shaming sluts and rejecting betas, for the benefit of good girls and alphas. And in the name of equality.
For anyone interested in a primer/introduction to game theory, this is what I used as an introduction.
http://www.amazon.com/Games-People-Play-Business-Courses/dp/1598034839
It is still a mindbending subject to me but I found these DVDs to be a decent intro. I was lucky enough to borrow them from the library so I didn’t have to pay money for them. If anyone has any other resources to share on game theory, I’d appreciate it.
Hollenhund, 28:
“Let’s discuss practice. Suppose an average beta chump walks into a room where both men and women are present in considerable numbers. How is he supposed to have success implementing this game theory stuff? Seek eye contact and then…what?”
Exactly. Tit for tat is a great strategy for a woman to find a man. It’s also a great strategy for cads and players, because it lets them find easy marks.
TFT is a terrible, terrible strategy for an average guy, because it encourages him to be tentative and hesitant. It says he has to “wait” for “enough” IOIs to proceed. It encourages him to proceed at a pace that makes HER comfortable, instead of at a pace he decides.
TFT is designed to benefit women. It’s designed to help women screen attractive men (i.e. men with options, men who will pursue what they want) from men who can’t, or don’t, or won’t. It’s designed to help her separate Path 1 men from Path 2 men. It’s designed to maximize HER options while limiting HIS.
No sale, Stephanie.
Cioran, 59#
Woman wants the best, up and upper.
Man wants variety, up down and side.
None wants “the same” until somebody starts doing rhetoric.
This post is yet another example of why men should never, ever take dating advice from women.
#57 “TFT does nothing to “screen”.”
Incorrect.
“It doesn’t weed out players or cads; but instead encourages them.”
Correct. TFT is designed to screen out betas.
#63 +1
#64 +1 “Just be yourself, and let the women come to you!”
#60 “What this post is doing is shaming sluts and rejecting betas, for the benefit of good girls and alphas. And in the name of equality.”
One could call it girl game.
“Now with tit-for-tat, once I make eye contact with a man more than once, I wait to gauge his interest. He will either initiate more eye contact or not at all. This is pretty much a pass/fail tactic. If he returns more eye contact, I will return more eye contact. If he advances the eye contact, I will reciprocate further based on his advance”
Let’s just talk about the eye contact part.
Attractive guy makes eye contact: IOI.
Unattractive guy makes eye contact: creepy!! Woman calls bouncer or police; man forcibly ejected from bar.
TFT actually is designed for women, not for men.
Besides the solipsistic designated-winner attempt “Let’s all agree to play the game the way in which I win”, about which we’ve been dogpiling, the part I don’t comprehend is that Shephard, or someone, considers nervousness and speechlessness as a Game tactic! Oliver Hardy game, smiling stupidly while fumbling with his tie.
I thought the OP was well-written but extremely naive. A TFT strategy, if adopted by women universally, would make the SMP a lot of fun. At that point the theoretical symmetry in sexual impulses and outcomes would obviate present SMP inefficiencies. It posits an ideal world of maximal SMP efficiency, as though we all walked around with a due diligence file, a mission statement, and a price tag. We would all be — men and women — essentially pre-qualified, like houses that are sold on-line.
Critical to this abstraction is the idea that men and women seek identical outcomes from each other and never exploit their advantages for their own (selfish) interests. It suggests that the pitching, bartering and haggling that is really the foundation of all intersexual interactions can be replaced with absolute transparency and the removal of feint, bluff, cynical trolling, and diverse rewards. (Diverse rewards: For example, many people of both sexes flirt strictly for attention, rather than true social contact.)
Of course, such women (practicing TFT) would need to realistically view themselves and their relative appeal. And they would never act out of self-interest owing to situational scarcity, different calculations of the purpose of the SMP (relationships v sex v resources). Because this would involve taking significant social risks while also imposing realism and restraint on selfie-culture and hookup culture, such women are as likely to be encountered as unicorns. Also, the process of symmetrical escalation assumes women have nothing to lose by escalating with physically more powerful strangers.
Back on Planet Earth, we instead see females arbitraging their ability to price discriminate; if a woman is rational, why would she abandon her ability to arbitrage her inherent SMP advantages, while retaining veto authority over any male who asserts his interest? Men chase and women choose, for a reason: this is a game of 5 card stud, where one (the woman) is today dealt seven cards. Why would women ever abandon this unfair advantage, their force multipliers, and their optionality? Again, it would be great if they would, by why presume that anyone with inherent power would abandon it?
So the TFT utopia is appealing but disregards self-interest in the SMP. It further disregards internally inconsistent impulses: men and women change their objectives situationally, often. As in any marketplace that disregards innate advantages and incentives, it remains inefficient. I think this TFT approach is certainly an element of effective girl game, and very useful to women who would wish to realistically pair off with men in their own league. I commend the suggestion that women do a more concerted job of reflecting male interest with female, reciprocal actions.
But as far as men go, socially-skilled men already practice TFT, with the exception that they know they must incur veto risk, compete with other men, navigate a world in which a misunderstood signal can be labeled “dangerous”, and present attraction triggers most women deny exist.
Also, any socially adept man will tell story after story about women who never provide symmetrical IOIs, but ultimately reward male assertiveness. I imagine SS would deny this reality, because it denies as well her statement that the sexes have “the same ultimate goal.” Rather, men and women usually achieve only momentary equilibrium in interests, and respond to SMP success very, very differently over time.
@70
Hardy? No.
Imagine Brady. Starring at his shoes, furtive glances (after significant eye contact), blushing and with a slight stammer saying “H-H-hi, you’re c-cute, my name’s Tom”
Back at 56, Yohami said: “Beta attempts eye contact. Beta cries inside.”
Something like this?
When i was much younger, I thought it would be a great idea to get dating advice from women. Go straight to the source and get it from the horse’s mouth. OOPS! Women do live in a climate of abundance.
Then I considered men who were naturally successful. The problem there is that success onlyconfirms prejudice. To add to that, they would be unaware of what they had done right.
That leaves those who have overcome their failures and are willing to share.
They’re pretty rare.
Great first post on J4G. I think Stephanie has an interesting idea and should be encouraged to further develop some of the underlying frameworks and techniques involved. I think her overall intellectual approach to being a social operator has a lot of merit.
Just from my own perspective: I have some modicum of experience designing and teaching courses on applied game theory, and more experience with ones that heavily rely on a few key game theoretical constructs. I have personally found that students usually need a “gateway drug” to be motivated for further study (I normally use an overfishing example), but when we get into practical applications I usually have to stress a few things:
1. “Rationality” does not necessarily mean that the other person’s views make sense to you. It has more to do with internal coherence based on deeply held belief, and some of those beliefs may ultimately be tied to speculative metaphysics.
2. The first priority is always to develop Situational Awareness (SA), which in this case means having an accurate model of the incentives and payoffs for participants in the game. This is where you have the traditional game trees, payoff matrix diagrams, etc., but a lot of that obviously has to be worked out in pre-production so that the man or woman on the ground has this model in his or her head when facing real-time, tactical decisions in the field.
3. Once you have developed SA to a point that you have this “model in your head” thing going on, you can then try to categorize the problem—i.e., to accurately describe the particular type of game that you are playing. Many would-be strategists end up trying to solve the wrong game because they had a faulty controlling assumption about other participants made in #1 or #2.
There are a few archetypal game formats and most situations fall into at least one of them, but determining the right one can be non-trivial. From a genetic perspective, there is a tension between the theoretically optimal mating/reproduction strategy for a male and the best one for a female.
Once you understand the game, you can use some of the workhorse tools to try to steer things in your favor—these typically include “plata or plomo” (“silver or lead”—“the greed & fear algo”—simultaneously presenting another participant with an immediate and attractive reward AND a very tangible punishment for inaction), controlling the narrative (offering multiple choices, but restricting them to options that you find attractive), strategic social dynamics (various persuasion techniques that shift the other participant’s perceived payoffs), commitment (sometimes “irrational” escalation of commitment is useful), inviting a third-party to act as judge or referee, collusion/”coopetition”, auto-pilot retaliation (“do x and y will happen to you automatically—I have no control over it, you will pay”), systematic trust/fairness-building practices that should help to isolate cooperative individuals (practices such as Stephanie describes in her article) , and strategic relationships.
4. The intersection of game theory, military strategy, and applied evo psych/strategic social dynamics/neuromarketing is an area of truly rich potential.
5. Humility is very important! If the game seems too obvious, be very wary!
Haha #70
Family guy quote. Lois: “oh that Hugh grant is so handsome. ”
* camera pans over to the movie screen*
” I I I say, I’m just so charmingly befuddled”
*swoon* from the female demographic in attendance
@75
As a practical matter it sounds like great deal of work for relatively little tangible payoff.
As a theoretical endeavor, truly fascinating.
jf12 really hits it in this thread
It’s not that TFT does not work, just that TFT is one part of the full suite of self-improvement for either gender. A man relying exclusively on TFT is a man that will not ever have a girlfriend. Can you imagine, for instance, Urkel relying on TFT?
Bwahahahahahahaahaha.
Not gonna get HIM laid. He needs to get his butt to a gym.
For (most) women, this is absolutely fine strategy, and the first and foremost effort. Women must evaluate a man’s investment in her and find a small number of men attractive, who have many options, and may lead her on. They also must present IOIs to men to encourage them to approach.
TFT is Gold for women.
TFT is useful for men, too…it keeps Urkel out of a destructive relationship with a gold-digger. She does something negative? Great, he does something negative.
However, men’s primary problem, is that they are Urkel. They must improve themselves and make themselves attractive. When it comes to building relationships and talking to girls, everything must revolve around that. Principal example? S***-test. This is not be regarded in a TFT framework, it is to be evaluted in the context of a woman testing your frame.
Also, wrt TFT, we do encourage men to implement some form of it: if a woman isn’t showing you immediate IOIs, tame back your interest. If a woman has you on Path 2 and isn’t showing IOIs in a month, next her.
By saying this, we get accused of being butt-hurt men who are bitter and insecure and yadda yadda.
Didact Reach sums it up well:
FIRST, you need to be desirable.
THEN, TFT works.
Women, by default, are desirable.
Men, by default, are not.
This is the market imperfection that needs correcting from a male POV.
Ironically, for a man, once you become desirable, even remotely so, the market is so skewed that TFT is no longer necessary. I had a few friends over last week: when the crowd dwindled to just my fiance, myself, and one female friend, the female friend turned the conversation sexual and she started talking about three-somes (!!!). A random woman touched me coming off the elevator at work today. Etc.
I do like TFT in general, though. I use it extensively in my own relationship, on a daily basis. However, like Yohami said in “girls with boyfriends,” the boyfriend role is a lot of work for a guy. And it really isn’t necessary unless your a poor sap like me that buys into the whole “preservation of Western Civilization” and “genetic legacy” and “God and Country” nonsense.
#75 re: “4. … potential.”
Yes. Haselton’s work on the adaptive utility of cognitive biases, Error Management Theory referenced in the “Window” article, basically proving that irrationality is often more rational than pure rationality, opens up one such rich vein with lots of potential.
#78 “Principal example? S***-test. This is not be regarded in a TFT framework”
Great counterexample, a cannonball blowing tft out of the water as a general strategy. At best, for men, tft works as a transition.
If we’re all prisoners of the dilemma that is the SMP, the classical formulation loses purchase once we realize that we are not identical prisoners with identical risks, penalties and rewards.
If we could achieve Stephanie’s condition of symmetrical interests, risks and rewards, her strategy would work better. However, in the world today, one isolated prisoner is related to the King, while the other one (an ex-con with three priors) enters custody hearing his jailer say, “You’re already behind the eight ball, pal, because your colleague has the weight of tradition and government on her side. Also, frankly, we just enjoy talking to her more than you, so hurry up and spill the beans because we don’t have time for this omerta crap.”
In this respect collaboration (TFT) rewards one side of the sexual contest unequally, and represents a shrewd insight of great utility — to that one side.
In an egalitarian equalist fantasy vacuum this sounds pretty good.
However, Hypergamy never seeks its own level, it seeks optimization. In other words, on a biological, evolutionary scale, women aren’t looking for ‘an equal’ they’re seeking a ‘better’.
The evolutionary jackpot that a woman’s subconscious knows, but cannot overtly express, is consolidating on a socio-sexual pairing that exceeds what her real SMV actually merits. In fact, the most solid form of interpersonal attachment occurs for women who are paired with men they acknowledge are 1 to 2 steps above themselves in sexual market value.
The other error equalism presumes (and you’ve made as well) is that both sexes base their estimate of SMV using the same metrics – they do not. The qualities and characteristics used to evaluate men’s SMV require more investment and maturation to develop than the characteristics men used to evaluate women’s SMV and later MMV. Equalism also presumes a state control for these evaluations and that ideally should make changes in condition of, or the decay (or increase) of that value irrelevant.
Stephanie, like most women, seeks to solve a problem created by equalism with equalism.
#78 “However, like Yohami said in “girls with boyfriends,” the boyfriend role is a lot of work for a guy. And it really isn’t necessary unless your a poor sap like me that buys into the whole “preservation of Western Civilization” and “genetic legacy” and “God and Country” nonsense.”
I’m asking Shepard point blank here: what is currently in it for men to play the game the way that women want it played? An attractive man already has more action than he can handle; an unattractive man already has no action. There is no incentive from women for either type of man to stop doing full-out Game all the time.
Yohami
“What this post is doing is shaming sluts and rejecting betas, for the benefit of good girls and alphas. And in the name of equality.”
+1 This was my read as well. Bridle the less attractive men with social governors via TFT rules of engagement; alpha men should let off the gas a little so she doesn’t have to go all-in or risk losing his attention based on HIS timeframe, attempting to limit his opportunity to test and invest in other plates in the competitive landscape and artificially construct some “equality” of investment and risk that exists nowhere on earth, bar or street corner.
In reality, players are quite adept at spinning plates at different speeds. With eye contact as the anchor, this is exceptionally easy. So sweet. Less attractive men get one bite at the apple; they must walk the path with her as she decides how fast and long it will “go” and when it will end, thus the TFT nicely constrains him to HER alone based on the false notion of mutual escalation.
Meanwhile the alpha men will most certainly remain highly mobile, periodically checking in with non-verbal cues like a good waiter “touching” a table until it is time to collect the check (and just the tip) at closing time. The TFT designs that he slow down, to reign this in, but we all know that the most attractive men gain nothing by playing by the woman’s rules, nor do most women want to see these men as some “equal” in her hands. As usual, IRL the alpha will get a pass or be savvy enough to manufacture them on his own. Its all so silly.
@Deti62
“Tit for tat is a great strategy for a woman to find a man. It’s also a great strategy for cads and players, because it lets them find easy marks.”
Yep. Slow down, she sets the pace, he still must have the savvy to read the IOI’s with exceptional accuracy, still must approach. Its a great way to further separate the dominant from the less dominant, the confident from the less confident, the guys on the margin from the preselected men with obvious options. The TFT rules of engagement are meant to be broken, but only by those men she deems worthy. Nothing has changed for the apex men, but more governors, more “equality” for the lesser men. It is disingenuous and/or ignorant to say that this is somehow a “win-win” antidote to the adversarial nature of the SMP. Its magical thinking plain and simple.
“TFT is a terrible, terrible strategy for an average guy, because it encourages him to be tentative and hesitant.”
Indeed. And he still must approach. She holds court; the applicants are granted the approach via cutesy eye contact – which of course is always in earnest and always clearly associated with definitive interest, TFT takes over as SHE evaluates HIM at her pace. Dancing with no lead is a sloppy affair, right theasdgamer?
Yet somewhere inside, she is disappointed because something is missing. He’s not being very dominant, taking initiative, leading her; he seems to be kind of passive, waiting for her to give him visual or vocal cues, however subtle she decides, to progress to the next steps of her interview. The more subtle, the more deniability, the less she had to invest, to risk, to evaluate him.
This doesn’t flatten the field for the inexperienced or less confident, it raises the bar by negating his frame entirely. Its meant to further cull the field, to hamstring the players and the sluts, in order for some self-appointed segment of the female population to realize their entitlement to “Fairness”. Sounds familiar. One more apple not far from the you-know-what tree.
It is fem-approved, chery-picked portions of game, meets the unspoken version of Antioch College: “I want to hold your hand; may I hold your hand now?” But you know, do it in a way that makes you seem cool.
“It says he has to “wait” for “enough” IOIs to proceed. It encourages him to proceed at a pace that makes HER comfortable, instead of at a pace he decides.”
Exactly, slow down beta, don’t force yourself into the tit if she is not giving you “equal” tat. What is equal tat you ask? Only she knows. But you’d better figure it out right quick. This is all massively oversimplifying and ultimately solipsistic. She is the sun, the men are merely objects in her system, subject to her gravity to be drawn in by her, cast out by her, burned to dust, or bathed in warmth. Don’t worry though, she won’t burn you because eye contact and fairness and equality.
“TFT is designed to benefit women. It’s designed to help women screen attractive men (i.e. men with options, men who will pursue what they want) from men who can’t, or don’t, or won’t. It’s designed to help her separate Path 1 men from Path 2 men. It’s designed to maximize HER options while limiting HIS.”
Yes.
Its adversarial out there because we have a culture that beats drums like Rape Culture (all men are potential rapists) all day and then those same people are celebrating the groundswell of a woman exclaiming “just [man up and] fuck me already!” the very next. Both are “right” because she says so.
Until women abandon their selective agency, their schizo desire to be equal without bearing the costs to them personally or owning-up, living the acknowledgment of how the multitude of contradictory beliefs ripple throughout the marketplace, men are going to continue to seek optimization of their own priorities, goals, desires. Men are merely listening to what the narrative says, watching what women do, and adjusting accordingly. Those who are not, are doomed; sheep for the slaughter. And good thing for women, the sheep still outnumber the wolves 100:1.
The books and tactics demonized in the post are a result of a culture created and maintained for the exclusive benefit of women. The manipulation of power, responsibility, and outcomes and the continual rigging of the market are what spawned these books and tactics; they are possible (however flawed) solutions to the fractured incentives, deeply disproportionate risk and rewards, and marginalization of men as people with wants and needs independent of (and often incongruent with) those held by women.
Men are not inclined to take a seat at the table of “equality” just to get to watch a woman eat more cake.
Heheh,..false equivalencies are the starting point of a weak argument. So, a “fair” amount of pain eh? Lets take a look at that ‘fairness’,…
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2010/06/27/misandry-a-reading-list/
Yep, both genders are completely culpable and implicit in this terrible blaming of each other.
/sarcasm
1. re: eye contact. As a hyperactive hyperfocusing extravert, I have to look away to avoid being creepy and staring.
2. re: smiling. With my rather feminine facial features, smiling looks pretty at best, simpering more likely. Only in the past couple of years have I started scowling or smirking/sneering, and these are MUCH more effective for me than smiling. References are available for women rating men’s expressions as attractive, but the takeaway is that for men a dangerous look is attractive to women, and him smiling nicely is negatively attractive.
3. re: nervousness. I’m still shaking my head over the concept of someone wanting to pretend to believe that exhibiting nervousness is a useful tactic for a man. Naturally, though, acting intimidated and etc IS a great feminine tactic.
4. re: touch. Yes, physical escalation works. Every single time it works, then it works.
5. re: “I like you” escalation. What is meant here is the transitional phase of isolation followed by comfort, which is a fine Game tactic.
JF12: “what is currently in it for men to play the game the way that women want it played?”
While that question answers itself given your premises, I think the more explanatory question is “What is currently in it for women to play the game as though they enjoyed identical benefits and potential outcomes as men?”
Again, SS’s TFT clearly enhances female authority and options, but does so because the game starts assymetrically. But would women, truly, wish to see the playing field leveled?
Female TFT game would definitely simplify my world, because it would relieve me of having to maintain such caution when exploring for new relationships. “Caution” here just means that I would worry much less about being penalized for my inherent, inferior position.
Sure, a few women seek the leveling (leveling that is the prerequisite condition of TFT), but how many Camille Paglias are there out there? It’s feminist orthodoxy to sustain hard-fought gains in divorce, family, and sexual harassment law, while simultaneously asserting a native equalism. No thinking person abandons free call options.
In general, as well, I am coming to believe that one of the valuable denials to thinking, feminist women is that SMP/MMP/parenting inequities *do not exist.* They simply may not be discussed. And hence they are not addressed in SS’s separate post today.
Even my girlfriends, who I know respect and care for me, cannot say anything except “NAWALT” or “parental alienation is not a serious problem” or “in the end, the court system is fair” or “that’s just a lurid anecdote, none of my friends are like that” or “hypergamy is just baffling sexist nonsense”. (I received the latter two disavowals last night.) The cognitive dissonance is off the charts. I regularly receive heartfelt sympathy for the situation with my boy, replete with teary eyes, at the same time the sympathetic woman tells me that this isn’t, broadly, how the world works.
re: dogpiling. It’s not quite a feeding frenzy, but I think in the marketplace of ideas it’s a good thing to have a pack of wild dogs to which carcasses can be thrown. We’re performing a useful service in shredding irrelevancies and tearing apart poorly knit frameworks.
@Fuzzie #74,
http://therationalmale.com/2011/12/07/the-horses-mouth/
http://therationalmale.com/2011/08/29/female-dating-advice/
This article makes a good justification for RoK’a no chick commentor policy
#87 The fact of hypergamy combined with women’s denials of hypergamy is what clued me in to Rollo’s feminine imperative matrix.
Required reading for Stephanie Shepard: Rollo’s “Horse’s Mouth” article.
I suppose I see the TFT as described simply as a reciprocal, mutual-reinforcing escalation of “cheap” (easily deniable, low risk of nuclear rejection) IOIs in order to try to find someone who is A) attractive enough for you and B) attracted to you enough. Presumably the TFT would stop at some point and a “risk transfer” would take place wherein one party—presumably the male—would have to initiate conversation. However, he would be doing this from a position of relative strength if a cycle of TFT had come before his approach; he would not be coming in “cold”, the girl would have more or less invited his approach via a sequence of signals and displays.
I would imagine that Stephanie has thought about this, but one possible concern for those trying this out could be that the men most calibrated to IOI sensitivity are probably the men who have the most experience in successfully reading IOIs, and the men with the most experience in successfully reading IOIs are those who have sexually monetized them, i.e., seasoned swordsmen who have gone, figuratively speaking, “from a view to a kill” many times.
He also will have a so-called resource abundance mentality, which gives him the confidence to take risks. So if an IOI was handled unprofessionally or ambiguously by the female, he might be more prone to seeing the glass as half full and taking action.
On the other hand, the more introverted or inexperienced guy—for our purposes here let’s assume that he is otherwise equally as attractive as the swordsman social operator—may need very heavy-handed dosages of female IOIs in order to make a move and cross that final threshold of social risk.
So let’s imagine that we had a continuum at which “momentary eye contact” was given an arbitrary cost of “1” in potential rejection units, while an approach in which one party walked up to the other and made verbal contact was given an arbitrary cost of “10”.
In a perfect TFT world, you would get this kind of parallel ladder-effect in which one party started with the low cost eye contact, the other reciprocated…and on and on, until they reached a reciprocated, clearing price level of 8 or 9. Then the guy or girl could make that final approach with a great deal of confidence that he or she was not going to to suffer a humiliating rejection.
I think that the issue with *some men* is that things may start low-risk at level 1 or 2, and then move up the flirtation ladder, and then get “stuck” at say level 4 or 5. The guy does not go up any higher—he’s indecisive, or at the very least unsure of himself. So the question would probably become whether or not the woman should go ahead and take on more approach risk OR she should disqualify the guy at this point for being “weak”.
If she summarily disqualifies the guy for weakness and exits the interaction, the argument could be made that she may be inadvertently biasing her game towards players. She could of course go the other way and assume that any guy who was too slick and well-calibrated is probably a player, and she could thus use TFT more to identify and reward social awkwardness and caution than to reward the the wild optimism and self-amusement capacity of the fuck-artist.
#87 re: sympathy with boy. Besides my own general dissatisfaction with women’s behaviors despite my omnipresent interest in women (keep in mind that women occupied Hawking’s thoughts “for most of his waking hours” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082440/Stephen-Hawking-Women-complete-mystery-says-Quantum-physicist.html) what prompted my initial excursions into the manosphere was sadness over my unattractive son’s plight.
@ADBG 78
Good comment.
The most important thing for guys is to build up their value because it then broadens the field of women that will find him interesting.
I think the general principle of tit for tat is sound because you require some reciprocation by the other person, beyond you’re initial investment in showing some interest. Compared to oneitis and always trying more and more, TFT is a marked improvement.
Basically it means that a person decides what amount of interest they are willing to display and risk and then they display it. If the other person doesn’t respond then you either next them or perhaps pull back and wait for another opportunity if your IOI was very small and perhaps didn’t register on the other’s radar.
Although Stephanie emphasized small IOIs, there’s no requirement in TFT that they be small. One’s strategy could be to do a large IOI, or several IOIs, and then see how the other person responds. Guys who are more attractive than the girl in question can tend to get away with larger and faster escalation because she’s more likely to be interested or become interested. However, such a guy who tries bolder moves and is rebuffed is no further ahead than the more incremental guy, except for the fact that there will have been no question that he was on her radar and got shot down.
I think TFT is a great strategy for men because men tend to find women attractive almost immediately (since it’s largely based on women’s looks and men’s greater baseline horniness). Unless he’s her archetype or happens to get lucky, coming on really strong is going to freak most women out. For the average guy, taking the middle ground of showing some boldness but not stampeding her by being over-eager is usually the best course. And beyond taking 1 or 2 steps of showing interest, he needs her to reciprocate or else he’ll be multiple steps ahead and she’ll feel pressured and bolt.
By consciously employing TFT, men make sure they don’t get too far ahead in showing all the interest they do feel and give the woman time to catch up with him and start to show interest. He may feel level 5 attraction and if he shows that all she’ll run for the hills. By only revealing part of his attraction then it doesn’t overwhelm her. So he reveals some smaller part of his interest and sees if she responds.
For most guys, this is the only way to proceed in their current state. Being the lovesick beta and professing undying love (infatuation) on the first conversation or date is going to send most women running. Since most guys aren’t going to cause overwhelming and fast attraction in most women (they’re path 2 guys), holding back revealing how interested they are is the only way to avoid spooking her and causing her to stampede. A more incremental, yet still active and somewhat bold, TFT forces the guy to hold back revealing all his interest too quickly and show her enough interest to start to evaluate him and possibly feel growing attraction for him.
It’s the difference between the firehose and a glass of water at a time.
Now, there is no time limit to TFT. If she does reciprocate then you can escalate and go rather quickly. And there’s not necessarily any limit on the size of escalation. The guy that is found more attractive by her can likely do larger chunks without risking spooking her, along with escalating faster.
So, I don’t get all the adverse reactions to TFT in the comments. But whatever.
I will say, though, that at a deeper level, TFT is not the most important thing for men to focus on (though I’m not saying they shouldn’t implement it–they should).
What most men should focus more on is:
1) Build your value to widen the pool of women that are or could be interested–the higher value you have, the more easy it becomes.
2) Really work on one’s inner game so that you really value yourself and are not walking around with your ego in your outstretched hand, hoping that some woman will confirm your worth, your value, fearing that they’ll reject you and that will mean you suck and will never get a woman.
Think about it. When you really value yourself do you really care as much if someone doesn’t like you? Do you care if some 4 y/o kid (or replace with someone else who’s opinion you don’t value much) thinks you’re stupid because you don’t like Barney? No. But too many guys value way too much how women will react to them (and it’s natural, so I’m not ragging on anyone). By increasing one’s “love affair” with himself (which included building one’s value and loving oneself at the point they’re at, now), the ratio of how much he cares about others’ opinions and reactions to him versus how much he values himself will decrease. If you can really get to that stage of not having so much ego invested in talking with and approaching women (not saying it’s easy) then it can actually become fun and you’re a lot less nervous to begin with and any lack of interest from the woman isn’t taken as some nuclear, soul-destroying dagger but simply them showing themselves not to be a good match (independent of who has higher value in the eyes of the masses).
So build value, up inner game to not walk around as an ego-validation beggar, and also use TFT to ensure that you’re not scaring women off by firehosing them with interest and also ensuring that they are interested and starting to invest and treat you well (basically, you have boundaries that you only accept women who reciprocate and put in some of the work, even if you’re the one who initiates, as is how it is most of the time).
#93 excellent analysis. There are complicating factors, though, not yet considered. One that applies to me is lack of eye game. I have always worn bottle-thick glasses, and furthermore basically I require close approach in order to see her eyes anyway. Then too, convo game is where I shine, so coming in cold works for me.
Also, while I think that TFT is a fine strategy, as far as it goes, I will disagree with Stephanie that women want to find an equal partner, or one of equal percentile rank, or equal value. Most romantic stories involve women getting men who are out of their league.
Also, I’ll disagree that the Game is necessarily toxic, although when practiced in the way that Style and Mystery did (basically pedestalizing pussy and ignoring their own codependency/narcissism struggles) it can be toxic–mystery tried to commit suicide when his gf dumped him for another PUA.
Here’s a great post about these topics:
http://therawness.com/reader-letters-1-part-4/
So the underlying frame they had was totally off but the tactics used, if done right, are effective. I think many in the game/attraction community eventually realized this and started to focus more and more on actually building a valuable life and self and upping one’s inner game.
Bastiat93
I just don’t see the TFT fairness doctrine in any meaningful way changing, leveling, the field top-to-bottom or male-to-female, in terms of risk/reward, or symmetry.
As you lay out as well, not much changes for the player/alpha/preselected man of experience, yet certain components of Game that a beta or fledgling red pill man might employ are desired to be neutralized. This favors her via injecting this false notion of equality of risk/investment in the beta approach, while effectively changing very little other than perhaps pacing, for the alpha in pursuit of the same woman. Any leveling is strictly in terms of her ability to sort through the men in question.
Very very few men cold approach w/o some IOI exchanges. The men who do, are already operating above and beyond such platitudes of fairness. For good reason: their “game” works, they are already attractive enough to gain entry. For the rest, IOI’s are essential, a prerequisite for engagement, not a rule of engagement.
The attempt to extrapolate, to stretch the TFT tactic as overarching moves several bridges too far. TFT in terms of initial IOI, fine, but everything after that is wishful thinking, retention of selective advantages whilst suggesting unilateral disarmament from the man of anything that might require greater risk from the women.
Risk that is reserved for only the top men. Which, again, are anything but hidden gems to be unearthed by the TFT; there is simply no need to search for these men via TFT, the TFT is merely a speed bump for them, one they are intimately familiar with. The rest is meant for the screening of certain men, who have yet to establish the extent of their attractiveness and intent, and present their end-game for her to review.
BB, to extend:
The appetite for risk is a function of a man’s social capital, and that is how things work now with the 20/80 rule; the beta whose venture profile peaks at 4 or 5 is really a bond buyer (he’s capital-short), not a venture capitalist (who is fine whiffing on 8 of 10 ploys, because he possesses the social capital to risk more of it).
If SS could install her TFT method in the female population, I predict two outcomes: a few women would give more bond-buyers a better shot, and most women would make life far easier for the swordsman. The high social capital swordsman would find more opportunities because of greater female transparency.
My view is that most credible women today recognize playas, and the playas have already adapted by modulating their game between their high-risk/high-reward frame, and the steady-eddie, Gregory Peck gentlemanly posture. The Peck posture (that of a Bill Gross/PIMCO, not a Kleiner Perkins posture), whether sincere or cynical, blows the risk-capped betas out of the trade unless its lane-changing, AFBB time.
And hence TFT, imo, would increase the playa swordsman’s options and field of play. He would no longer have to work nearly as hard to discover good investment opportunities. Stephanie’s construction seems to depend on the premise that high social capital men are to be avoided (because they are insincere bad boy playas at heart), but I don’t accept that premise; I don’t think women over the age of 25 have much trouble distinguishing bad boy playas from high social capital men who have many appealing attributes on offer.
Thus the dogpiling here reflects some alarm on the part of many of the commenters that TFT will just make the rich, richer. TFT would seem to depend on the premise that most women really just want to find a greater beta, whereas none of us have ever seen that. We see a world in which women will pull every lever at their command to acquire the highest-value man who is nominally available.
Just an aside, a guy like Nick Krauser would turn out a girl like Stephanie without even trying.
Han,
How is your assessment of the TFT any different than calibration, be it from the initial IOI’s, through the full lifecycle of the engagement? As TFT relates to this kind of calibration and escalation, what is the post suggesting that is any different than what is happening already by intent and default?
There is a proposition that seems to be getting glossed over. And a premise (or three) that is not on solid ground. So then, with an agenda that desires to *change* something that seems to be already happening to get at some end, and premises that demonstrate preference for magic over truth, what is left to discuss that is of value to men desiring to arm themselves with sound and honest strategies?
Han,
Thanks for the thumbs-up.
I agree, the, erm, “hostility” to the above post is a little unsettling. In the sense of, I did not expect it, rather than being discomforted, sort of like seeing a gorilla at work and thinking “that’s strange.”
Like you, I think TFT does have some utility for men. It’s a frame-work I apply quite often, not just in interactions with women but interactions with people in general. It prevents you from over-investing in a relationship that does not serve your interests and actually harms you.
To some extent, I apply this to the relationship that means most to me, IE with my fiance. I definitely think there is SOME merit in the TFT approach. It’s intuitive, it punishes bad behavior, it builds reputation, and it allows for growth in a relationship.
However, the complete man needs more tools in his back-pocket, and TFT is not Game. It’s not even the full scope of non-romantic interactions.
Examples:
-putting on a smile and behaving bubbly can move a friend from a dour mood to a happy mood. Positivity is infectious, as is negativity.
-The Benjamin Franklin Effect: asking someone to do a favor is likely to produce cognitive dissonance and get them to do more favors. Doing a favor for them does not encourage TFT, it encourages them to devalue you.
-Some co-workers cannot be negotiated with via TFT…you have nothing they want. This is different from an Arms Control agreement because you cannot create a mutually beneficial arrangement.
-If your objective is POWAAAAHHHH, you need to leverage what power you have to create a power base, which involves trading favors and intimidating people.
TFT does not describe the sum of human behavior. Therefore, it cannot describe the sum of men-women interactions. Therefore, definitionally, it cannot be the sum of Game.
Where you find the men pushing back, I think, is because this is being presented as the sum of Game, and it is not the sum of Game. It isn’t even the BULK of Game. It’s a small fraction, and men have a much more difficult time in the SMP. We are used to women not understanding this, yet lecturing us on what SHOULD work.
It would be like me yelling at my fiance for not being able to lift her end of the couch, and saying she should just do some more pull-ups. Or that she is too emotional and should fix it by manning up. Wrong-headed, and since men are suffering, it comes across as insensitive.
Perhaps correcting this to a military analogy, it is as if modern women looked at WWII, saw the huge body losses, and wondering why Soviet men did not just use nukes on the Germans. It’s so easy!
BuenaVista
“The cognitive dissonance is off the charts. I regularly receive heartfelt sympathy for the situation with my boy, replete with teary eyes, at the same time the sympathetic woman tells me that this isn’t, broadly, how the world works.”
Indeed, the dissonance is remarkable. And it seems to metastasize with age. The youthful are too busy ingesting the kool aid, yet the decades of experience that (should) suggest the kool aid is an e-ticket to Diabetes II are dismissed with ease. Excessive sugar can cause type II, not Kool aid.
“No thinking person abandons free call options.”
Yes, which is part of why these calls for “Fairness” and “Equality” mean something else entirely. Your reframing the question provides great clarity as to the depth and breadth of the flawed premise of this exercise. Without such leveling, it is all just magic. With a price, of course, which is to be paid by (certain) men.
The discussion also leaves out the fact that a significant percentage of men in prime “dating” years are leaving the market entirely. Which is only to be *noticed* in the frame of how this is limiting women’s options. There are many sacred cows in these ‘arguments’ for leveling the field, of neutralizing the adversarial nature of the SMP. Yet the starving men are meant to tend to those cows just the same. Any protests as to the richness of such fallacies as fairness and equality, or calling attention to those fattened cows are met with: just eat more chicken.
#101 I agree.
@BuenaVista 87;
In general, as well, I am coming to believe that one of the valuable denials to thinking, feminist women is that SMP/MMP/parenting inequities *do not exist.* They simply may not be discussed.
Of course not. Why should they? As long as these women continue to control the narrative they can bias the SMP further in their favor. Unlike men, women do not have the perverse compulsion to throw down their weapons and fight fair. If they have an advantage, they take it.
#104 I wonder if mgtow, or under-desired men in general not bothering to try to live up to their women-ordained role as designated losers, fulfill an important role in the SMP. Imagine one man, a player, in the marketplace alone with a couple of dozen women. Obviously he knows he can sit back and pull off his shoe and order them to kiss his foot and one or more will immediately comply. Now sprinkle a couple dozen losers in there, and then the player may think he must show he is better than them, so he bothers gaming the women like the women want.
TFT as proposed is reactive, a man that is desired by women doestn do TFT. If a man does TFT he’s letting the woman lead. The Alpha way to do TFT is “next”.
At the core, as other have pointed out, the man is still doing the initial interaction (if the woman is doing the initial move, she wants to fuck him and nothing else is needed), so the Tit comes from her after he did the That, which means the That is the leading move and is done in isolation, at his own risk
In other words That is male game and Tit is female game
As a man you assume outcome and go for it, with or without external reinforcements, you see what you want and go go. And you keep doing that as long as you think you can get what you want even if everything else is giving you negative IOIs. In other words, a real man doesnt give a fuck. But a man who values his time, energy and seed will invest wisely and put more where there are more returns, aka, on the easy side rather than the challenging side. This is not about keeping a scoreboard and replying with a Tit where you got a That but about investing all of your resources right now on whats bringing dividends and investing zero on whats not bringing you dividends, which in dates translates to fucking the woman or nexting her asap. And if you have this kind of skill that becomes confidence and detachment and then every woman wants a part of it, and then again there’s no TFT involved.
So that’s why I seem antagonistic to it.
If you’re an unattractive man theres no TFT for you, sorry. All your Tits (lol) are going to be about learning your place out of the game.
And for an attractive man all TFT from women can be summarized as shit tests and attempts to own your frame, and since you’re supposed to be the owner of That regardless of her Tits (lol) the whole TFT is nonsense. Its just petty.
For a girl though, TFT must be like breathing, you do me That, therefore I do you Tit, and Im justified and you’re held responsible for my Tit. But since girls are responding to the That produced by men, who cares about their Tits anyway? it’s not like they have any control or influence over the outcome (which is in hands of the man)
So who’s this advice for and why is it proclaimed as truth?
@ Yohami 63;
Woman wants the best, up and upper.
Man wants variety, up down and side.
None wants “the same” until somebody starts doing rhetoric.
I disagree. Both men and women have multiple mating strategies. You’ve described just one each.
“Equal” matches are actually very common – if you factor in the pricing premium women command for having a uterus. That’s worth at least a 30% salary premium or a point or two of SMV.
That’s a lot of tits.
@ YOHAMI 60
Good catch that SS’s plan puts sluttier women at a disadvantage relative to less-slutty women in the game to hook high SMV men. This is important in figuring out the reason for SS’s plan. Her plan, which has no chance of being implemented to any significant degree, would put a prettier face on women’s hypergamy, since it would slow down the escalation.
Girls hate Slutty girl’s for doing FE and taking all the available men
By available, I assume that you mean “visible, attractive” as opposed to “invisible, unattractive.”
Ciaran,
“Women have multiple mating strategies.”
I hope you make a killing with them.
theasdgamer,
“By available, I assume that you mean “visible, attractive” as opposed to “invisible, unattractive.””
I meant MEN, so 20% of males or less, you know, the invisible and unattractive are not men but creeps.
@YOHAMI
I hope you make a killing with them.
Not me – I’ve met my reproductive objectives already, using the classic beta provider strategy.
Ciaran,
“I’ve met my reproductive objectives already, using the classic beta provider strategy.”
Good boy!
@Taz
I don’t think it’s very different than calibration. Namely, (typically) the man shows some interest and sees how she responds. How the post can help average guys is in the fact that too many average guys get highly infatuated too quickly and then lay all their cards on the table, scaring the woman away. By getting these infatuated men to hold back and only lay down one card up front (or at most two) and see if she reciprocates, it saves them from firehosing the woman and causing her to run for the hills. By only showing some interest up front, these men increase their odds of generating attraction in the women.
Of course, longer term, these men should work on their value and inner game so as to not get so easily and fully infatuated with women they barely know or that have not shown any interest in them.
Basically, TFT can rein in their unbridled passion and channel it into more effective behavior that will allow the woman to possibly be intrigued by a bit of interest from him and give her time to desire him, as opposed to just being stampeded over the buffalo jump by his all-on whooping and hollering declaration of “excessive” interest (in her mind at that point in time).
Again, I would argue that many men are not already doing calibration effectively and feel and show way too much interest way too soon. Putting on the TFT training wheels can immediately improve his actions by not showing too much interest too soon and it can also help over the long term so that he doesn’t feel as intense infatuation so quickly until she starts to earn it.
Note, I’m not limiting TFT to just eye contact (and I’m not sure that Stephanie was, rather, I just interpreted that as one possible example). The tat that a man employs can be large or small. The important things are that he not excessively ego-invest in it and that he next her or put her on the shelf if she doesn’t reciprocate. All the while, building value over the long term.
@YOHAMI;
Good boy!
Those gynocentric sites that I’ve commented on (or kicked off of, as the case may be) dismissed counter-examples or counter-arguments with shaming language. Hopefully that’s not the trend here too.
Ciaran,
Im not dismissing your counter case nor your argument, Im just understanding it as a variation of NAWALT, which I agree with in principle, but it’s misrepresentative of the general picture.
I met a chick that liked fat dudes who were intro dragons. I never bring her as an example, because anomalies are only examples that anomalies exist.
As for female mating strategies, beta/alpha models, I cheer you for getting what you wanted.
@ADBG 103
+1
“Where you find the men pushing back, I think, is because this is being presented as the sum of Game, and it is not the sum of Game. It isn’t even the BULK of Game. It’s a small fraction, and men have a much more difficult time in the SMP. We are used to women not understanding this, yet lecturing us on what SHOULD work.”
I agree, it’s just one piece of game and I think Stephanie would do well to try to get into the average male’s shoes more. As has been said, most young women simply are the prize and young men (and older ones too) are the pursuers (of course top men are a different story).
Since average young women have more sexual and societal value and power than average young men, then women don’t need to focus as much on upping their value (though they still can improve if they’re fat, frumpy or bitchy) as young men do.
So I think TFT is one useful tool for men, to ensure they don’t show all their interest too fast and to gradually get in the habit of making sure the other party is treating them well. But, as I said, the real gains for men will come by upping their value and working on their inner game and self esteem. I see TFT as part of an overall “training” regimen that men should employ.
@ Taz
Dancing with no lead is a sloppy affair, right theasdgamer?
Without a lead, there won’t be any couples dancing occurring.
“TFT is a terrible, terrible strategy for an average guy, because it encourages him to be tentative and hesitant.”
Indeed. And he still must approach. She holds court; the applicants are granted the approach via cutesy eye contact – which of course is always in earnest and always clearly associated with definitive interest, TFT takes over as SHE evaluates HIM at her pace.
I have experience that is on point with TFT and worked in a very limited scenario. I was on a study date with a woman in college in the library–it was our first date and was platonic as far as I knew. (She said that she had a bf back home whom she wanted to marry.) We sat facing, about fifteen feet apart in comfy chairs. About ten minutes into the date, she started glancing at me over her book every now and then. I had no idea what she wanted, so I approached to ask. Well, I didn’t have to ask anything. She wanted to make out. She ran fast escalation. First time that ever happened to me. I realize now that she saw me as high SMV.
TFT worked for her in that situation and had a good outcome for me, but, at the time, I had no idea that anything sexual was going on. I suspect that it’s these sorts of irregular scenarios that TFT is best suited for, where a woman can use it to get a high SMV man interested in her. She’ll then move from TFT to FE.
Some excellent comments throughout the thread!
BV #99: I am in complete agreement. A consequence of widespread TFT would be increased price transparency and efficiency, but another might be to amplify the advantages currently enjoyed by the Swordsmen, who would then proceed to crucify much of womankind on a penis of gold.
As you noted, changing the signal/noise ratio and increasing the transparency in IOIs makes those who use IOIs most effectively better positioned to use their time and resources most efficiently. Stephanie’s described experience working in these venues and people-watching probably makes her very good at perceiving and displaying IOIs, so TFT works for her. Personal risk is the currency of tactics, and the TFT as described seems to be concerned with avoiding one major inefficient outcome: the girl who was attractive to a guy and found that guy similarly attractive, but who failed to encourage his taking a risk/approaching because she failed to identify and reciprocate his IOIs.
In this instance, a willing buyer and willing seller were unable to have a deal because frictions and transaction costs impaired the market’s ability to clear. Widespread TFT may help to mitigate this.
If the guy is not found attractive, TFT does not help him except in the sense that unreciprocated IOIs may be realized as a market signal to move on. If the girl is not found attractive, TFT does not help her except in the same sense. TFT helps if each party found the other to be attractive but something was going wrong in the signaling system that led to no action being taken.
I think that you make another critical point in your description of the adaptive, strategic versatility of those sword-carriers who successfully evolve past the age of keg stands and drunken hook-ups in a stained bathtub in the ATO house. The more savvy and sophisticated have learned that while the formula for success with the 20-29 crowd may be more heavily weighted towards attractiveness and related displays, the would-be lane-changers of 29+ will grudgingly accept lower HAWTGUY sperm donation quality in exchange for “Commitment”—lifestyle, Good Dad reliability, and SAHM optionality.
So the Swordsman unpacks this Commitment thing and identifies its constituent parts from the perspective of mating signals and information content: Commitment = Capability ($$ to make the lifestyle real) + Willingness to Exclusively Share (Emotional Investment, Desire for Monogamy, Family Values).
The player continues to use dangerous HAWTGUY as his loose, snappy, ranging jab, but more selective, quasi-“Commitment” displays become his devastating overhand right.
@Yohami,
but it’s misrepresentative of the general picture.
Is it though? Most of the men I know are beta providers, and most of them are doing it successfully.
If we look beyond personal experience and look at statistics, it’s clear that at least one portion of the populace is still doing the beta provider strategy successfully – college educated men with decent jobs. This group is above the 50th percentile, certainly, but most of us are nowhere near alpha. But most marry, have kids, and don’t get divorced by their wives.
@Bastiat
This literally had me laughing out loud. One of the best quotes I’ve seen around the net in a while.
Han,
I get your points, and agree, but I still think you are selectively (and generously) harvesting these useful tidbits for men who are not at the top of their game from a post that does not share that same agenda. What you distill is true, but it was true before the post and if it is indeed any part of the posts central tenets, there is an awful lot of chaff in the wheat. Which begs many questions.
It starts to feel like, yes, feminism has benefited men in these areas, so lets just focus on those things and ignore the hidden, longitudinal, and disproportionate costs that must continue to get paid by those who have, in fact, the least to gain from the ideology in holistic terms.
So we should read into the things that are previously known to be helpful to some men, but ignore the premises and extrapolations and undercurrents of an agenda that in many ways runs counter to those very same men finding success in the SMP as it exists, not as we desire it to exist. ?
Not trying to be obtuse, though I suspect I am succeeding. I appreciate game theory and any legitimate attempts to actually level some decency and fairness, but there are just too many of the same themes we regularly challenge (for good reason) woven through this particular attempt to view it as empathetic to the audience for which you see value nor particularly realistic in terms of starting points nor desired end-games given our real life experience in the SMP. As men*
*not the same as women
Rollo,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6wtXk0McDM
As far as getting it from the horse’s mouth, in talking to a colt, he told that a filly that he was sweet on asked him to share his oats after she was done eating hers. This got to be a habit. When it came time to make foals, off she went to the one who was bulked out from eating all his oats.
“No more sharing oats!”
Would this be the equine equivilent of alpha f*cks/beta bucks?
@Ciaran 117
Here you will find that short of over-the-top personal attacks or trolling, we allow all comments. Reasoned arguments are preferred but we won’t delete comments that might not live up to that either (unless they cross the pale).
So Yohami is free to have his view that you’re mating path is a low probability of success path. You are free to put forth your arguments that it’s not.
So while a somewhat thick skin may be required here at times (not saying you don’t have one, just speaking in general), you can know your comments won’t be deleted and there will likely be some that agree with you and some that disagree.
Anyway, welcome, and keep commenting.
Ciaran,
Cosign what Han said, you’re welcome.
I might seem rude, but that’s because I am.
@ Han
But, as I said, the real gains for men will come by upping their value and working on their inner game and self esteem. I see TFT as part of an overall “training” regimen that men should employ.
I don’t ever see TFT helping me. My inner game is solid and has been since I was fifteen. I never get butterflies when thinking about approaching women–even very beautiful women. Apparently my inner game comes from my narcissism. [OT: I took a narcissism test and scored high on arrogance, superiority, and self-reliance, which are key attributes of narcissistic men, per the test. I also have a bit of entitlement, but almost no vanity. My score (24) is significantly higher than is typical of celebrities (18).]
TFT would be a time waster for me. Time is part of social capital and should not be wasted.
I need to cold approach to DHV with my confidence and TFT would kill that.
@ YOHAMI
I might seem rude, but that’s because I am.
I should punch you in the nose, bro.
Just to reiterate some of the points made in the comments. I think it helps me to restate them because it keeps them organized in my head.
One point is that TFT presumes too much in order to work. It depends on:
a. All SMP/MMP participants have the same objectives; i.e. are seeking the same things at the same time.
REALITY: People’s sexual and relationship objectives change from time to time, situation to situation. It is not true that everyone’s objective is to find a LTR/spouse of the same attractiveness level.
b. All SMP/MMP participants are dealing in good faith and above-board with each other.
REALITY: People have hidden agendas they are unwilling to disclose. In fact, most people have agendas they don’t even know about and thus aren’t in a position to disclose.
c. Men and women are on rough parity with each other in terms of power. There is no significant sexual power differential.
REALITY: This is not true and never has been true. Young single women are the rockstars of the SMP. Their sexual power is simply immense. They have orders of magnitude more power than most of the men who notice them.
d. The sexes are roughly equally attractive to each other, i.e. the average man and woman are attractive to about the same percentage of the opposite sex.
REALITY: This is also not true, never has been true and never ever will be true. Most women are attractive to most men. But most men will never be attractive to most women. SO there is an assumption here that cannot be remedied.
this is a good lower 50% of beta male strategy …….maybe.
when a top 5% guy walks in the room, all bets are off.
when you read this remember that even though i sense more than a little INTJ in Ms. Shepherd which adds some guy -like logic into her presentation, every ounce of advice and “theory” is predicated and given through the given self-rationalization on the male being attractive to her prior to engaging in whatever process she defines here.
now we know that 95% of men are unattractive betas, and ultimately women are forced to settle.
its not bad advice really, just not reproducible and horribly solipsistic. This is why Rollo and others say never take relationship advice from chicks. They suck at it.
Ciaran,
“Most of the men I know are beta providers, and most of them are doing it successfully.”
I confess I wonder what success is for a beta. From my beta days, it was finding a woman who loved me for who I was. Sadly for a beta it means love for what he’s able to provide, which usually is not exciting
“[…] one portion of the populace is still doing the beta provider strategy successfully – college educated men with decent jobs […] marry, have kids, and don’t get divorced by their wives.”
I wonder what do you mean. So question for you.
What do you mean?
Most of these men you know, do they “successfully” have the life of an alpha with a woman who gives them plenty of sex, no nagging, and cant get enough of? or do they “successfully” have the life of a beta who gets little or no sex, plenty of nagging, and a woman who looks at them with contempt while she writes their todo lists for the weekend?
What is success? does it mean something different for betas, is actually getting a nagging woman a triumph? having kids? etc.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/strictly-casual/201405/do-hotter-people-want-more-casual-sex
Ciaran
All probably true enough. But is J4G a forum for married beta providers to provide a road-map for aspiring beta providers to follow-suit? Perhaps the reality is that this is indeed part of the mix. But that treads right close to blue-pill territory. And the build-a-better beta forums are typically moderated by older women married to beta-providers. Not high N, single men honing their game and locking down attractive women.
That said, the SMP is increasingly hostile to these men attempting to exercise their true assortive mating. If all routes pass through attraction-sex (path 1) first, and the venue is a bar, etc. then the continual “success” of these men fulfilling their beta-providing roles increasingly requires them to run the gauntlet alongside the swordsmen.
We discuss time and again how this ability to attract, find, secure, keep a woman given the culture and SMP is increasingly perilous. College, good job, provider mentality is not enough. If that was bread and butter, we would not have the kind of backslide we are having in terms of marriage delays, decline, divorce, and post-marital dissolution of attraction that sends men into the ‘sphere for answers.
Posts like these can be sliced and diced into valuable morsels for these men, but the truth within the overarching (red pill) messaging needs to remain paramount. Defaulting to statistical “successes” is tricky when chasing the bar down.
@ Ciaran
You ought to take YOHAMI’s ideas about gaming women very seriously. I recognize serious talent, being a natural. I ran pickup from when I was 15 to 18 about four decades ago. I recognize IOI’s exceedingly well when I am birddogging, though not so well if I’m the one being birddogged (though I’m improving). I’m PDA-shy when it comes to touching and kissing–I like my privacy. I’m getting better about showing casual affection to women dance partners and they seem very comfortable with it. I’m not experientially-current like YOHAMI is, though. I defer to him about game stuff beyond approaches.
@Taz 124
I have the cognitive bias of tending to look for the useful and discarding the chaff. I have to consciously put on my skeptic hat to examine things more skeptically.
So, I can see how Stephanie’s post is more useful for women, where they are already the prize and simply need to show more interest towards men of interest to reduce the men’s perceived risk of approaching.
I, of course, agree with the general sentiment that average men face a discriminatory landscape and have written many posts on the subject.
I simply think that a more balanced analysis of what women write is warranted, one that looks at the wheat and the chaff as opposed to only looking for chaff. (And I’m not speaking specifically about you.) We saw the same dynamic in the What the Sphere has Given Her post, where many commenters wanted to find all the possible weakness in it and only focus on that. Again, we saw the same thing in Emily’s post, where she was assumed to have engaged in decent amounts of casual sex. I think there is too much tendency to jump to the skeptical or cynical stereotypical interpretations and not enough focus on what is really being said, though I have no problem in criticizing what has really been said when warranted.
I tend to be more of a half-and-half guy, where I think probably about 1/2 of women do not behave very well or have good character and the other 1/2 do. Of course, it’s not just binary but a spectrum ranging from bad to good. I think that the good ones tend to get and stay married or LTR’ed more quickly and that means the remaining population of women (never married or divorced) is weighted more to the flaky, the entitled, the rude, the bitchy. Of course, some of the women who get married suck too and make their husband’s lives miserable.
@ deti
Young single women are the rockstars of the SMP.
I thought it was greater alphas.
Greater alpha > 20-something women > lesser alphas > postmural women > betas
In the MMP, the betas and postmural women switch places and the lesser alphas and 20-something women do as well, from what I have seen.
Other points:
1. TFT is proposed as “leveling the playing field” between men and women; but it does no such thing. It doesn’t account for the legions of unattractive men; or men deemed unattractive for one reason or another. It puts on that majority of men most of the “searching” costs and “approaching” costs.
2. TFT makes it easier for cads and players to clean up with women who are showing IOIs because such men are used to seeing them, responding to them, and leveraging them. So, TFT works for attractive men and men with options. TFT doesn’t work as well for men learning game, or men working to increase their attractiveness.
3. TFT is just one small part of Game; not the sum and substance of Game.
4. TFT softens the SMP for women. It helps women screen attractive men from unattractive men. TFT helps women screen men with options from men without options. TFT helps women screen men who will pursue, from those men who can’t, don’t or won’t pursue.
5. TFT is false advertising as “everyone just wants a partner equal to their own best selves”. This is not true. Women’s hypergamy demands a man who is not equal, but is BETTER.
6. TFT can be a hindrance to average men because it encourages them to wait and hang back until they have enough IOIs to proceed.
7. Contrary to 6., TFT can be a help to average men because it encourages them not to put all their cards on the table; encourages them to hang back and make HER throw out more IOIs.
Ciaran@122
you have no idea what is happening behind your back on a girls nite out, to a woman. every single one unless A. they have an alpha at home, or B……
there is no B. watch a married girl kiss her husband or kids, or fiddle with her wedding ring when an alpha walks by. she is trying to remind herself of her promise. hit the triggers right, that all falls away.
betas are failing at everything other than providing as a farm animal would or as any other commodity would.
thats the red-pill, gotta swallow it all.
ADBG
You apply TFT often; it is merely a beginning; it is calibrating; it is not Game, merely one tool. Fine. I’m in agreement. But that is not what the post is suggesting. If TFT is already happening as it relates to IOI’s, for some segment of men – just as you admit to its employ, then what needs to be ‘discussed’? Is it that the “wrong” men are doing it, the “right” men are not doing it (enough or at all?), or is it about outcomes? Who’s, his or hers? Oh, its the same?
The post aims to settle something that is presented as unsettled, to right some wrongs, but what happens if the material take off’s are not challenged, confirmed? What gets built?
The argument desires to paint TFT as an equalizer based on the application of TFT well beyond the point of realistic utility for the purpose of leveling risk/reward from a singular perspective without appropriate regard for the inherent disproportions and and dislocations present within the marketplace.
This is not just about one tool to be applied, there is an aim to stretch this one tool as an overarching “fix” to “manipulation” in “filtering for suiters” in “preying on insecurities” and so on. If this sounds a lot like women not wanting to either buy false goods (get gamed by a beta) or take disproportionate risk, over-invest in alpha (pump and dump), then we might want to explore that. If it is by accident or intent, it matters not, feelings have no place; this is not a personal anecdote on trial.
Any hostility – at least from me, is in the intellectual dishonesty; the very same kind I would level at those progressives who want me to not only ignore their unprincipled exceptions, but to help them construct a temple upon them. This is no more hostile than a scalpel incising a tumor from healthy tissue.
The real danger is when the fruits borne from poisonous trees are allowed to set upon fertile ground for too long. This isn’t academia, where any criticism against the sacred premises are viewed as invective. If this is iterative, then all the better. Address and redress, but I sense that this is more about men “not understanding”, “not getting it”, and otherwise rejecting ideas because misogyny or whatever. Cue the subtle shaming of ‘hostility’ in tone thus disqualifying content. Also seem familiar?
No amount of subtle shaming or linguistic manipulation and “sciency” science is going to make me believe in magic. If this is indeed about a face-value proposition that we need to apply more TFT within the SMP to reduce the hostility and adversarial tendencies, then the writing needs some heavy editing.
I’ve read enough of your comments to know that you are more than capable of the very same kind of “hostility” when your intellectual nuts are kicked. After all, I do recall you commenting how J4G can “approach sophistry”. So where does this post fit in that view?
@asdgamer
Cold approaching is NOT incompatible with TFT. That cold approach is your tat that you’re willing to risk. The tit is whether she talks to you or accepts to dance or whatever. Now, if she doesn’t want to talk to you or dance and you keep pining after her and keep trying to talk with her then you would not be following TFT anymore because she was never giving you any tits!!! lol
TFT doesn’t mean small steps, necessarily, though it can. It’s simply that whatever you ante up is reciprocated by the other party (at least sufficiently, and it could be in a different way but at least perceived as of sufficient value: for example, asking someone to dance might not lead them to ask you to dance but them accepting to dance is a sufficient tit).
This tread gives new meaning to Tits or Shut Up.
*thread
Raunchy TFT joke alert:
“You send me a pic of your tits fore I’ll send you a pic of my “tat.”
To me this is simply reinventing the wheel
See pretty girl, approach pretty girl, escalate until you crash and burn or get the girl. Rinse repeats.
Everyone seems to want to come up with something new instead of working the proven basics until they are mastered
And I know that isn’t easy for the most of men, but I thought that was the general idea of the man o sphere, figure shit out, encourage men to do better etc etc
@asd 137
I’d basically agree with your ranking of the different classes of men and women. Of course, one could further refine it by creating more subcategories where ugly women have less marriage power than average beta men and so forth. But too many categories can muddy the waters when the point isn’t to get too into the weeds.
@ Ciaran
Yeah, a beta has to worry about Sneaky Fucker Game. I ran that a few times. Unless your wife is mate-guarding herself (maybe by becoming a whale), you’re gonna get cuckolded.
Recently I was chatting up a broad who has a LTR. I disqualified her bf in just a few secs and she indicated that she was interested in moving on. Hypergamy is a bitch.
“I disqualified her bf in just a few secs and she indicated that she was interested in moving on.”
Girls with boyfriends.
#133 interesting article, entirely explained by betas not wanting to get burned more than they already do.
I’m generally in agreement with Han that TFT is usefull as a tool to help beta guys keep from disqualifying themselves needlessly with anti-game. Thinking back to my more beta days, it definitely would have helped prevent me from sabotaging myself on a few occasions.
However, it’s also important to note that it likely isn’t enough by itself for the vast majority of guys. As I said, it’s more like a single tool inside the entire toolbox (the guy’s “total” game). You’re still gonna need a lot more, but it’s a good foundation.
@ Ton 145
See pretty girl, approach pretty girl, escalate until you crash and burn or get the girl.
What is this “crash and burn” you speak of? heh
I think we need to STOP looking at married beta providers as ‘successful’. Most of the time their wives are overweight, nagging, moody, and never want to touch them. The thing is even if the ‘beta’ gets married to a decent woman, he is already in his mid – late 30s and so is she. Seriously, why the hell would you want to spend the horniest years of your life alone then marry an aging woman?
It seems like most of the female bloggers WANT men to spend their early years alone for some sadistic reason. This is why we don’t take advice from women b/c it only works for post wall looking for a hubby types.
#132 “I confess I wonder what success is for a beta. From my beta days, it was finding a woman who loved me for who I was. Sadly for a beta it means love for what he’s able to provide, which usually is not exciting”
Yohami will get me to cry today. Success, for most men, means having to be pleasing to a woman without any hope of the woman reciprocating at all in any way, and still him “getting” to count it as a success when she does happen to be pleased.
#152 “It seems like most of the female bloggers WANT men to spend their early years alone for some sadistic reason.”
Correct. The vast majority of women would rather see unattractive men be unhappy than anything else.
Han,
Good points, noted. Those other posts were more personal in nature and content; this being touted as decidedly more academic, hence (I think) the green-light to dig in.
I do appreciate your tendency to find the wheat. I think the red pill can oversteer a man into hyper-criticism as it does attune him to always be looking for the puppet strings, the ulterior motives, the femcentric condescension. Never mind the fact that it is not particularly hard to find to the trained eye, or that it is commonplace. Yes, middle ground at some point, but eyes will not close.
But I also don’t think finding the wheat at the cost of de facto furthering a dangerous or counterproductive agenda gains much for the average reader either. And at some point there just might not be that much wheat and we have to consider that in light of “equality”, just how much latitude we would give a man who assumes a position of expertise, expounds as such, and renders a 10-20% hit rate while carrying forward principles that have been long since identified as deeply harmful to the mission.
I’ve hit my 10,000 words. Cheers.
Deti, #137:
The more I think about it, the less I can support your #7.
Unfortunately I must be anecdotal, in a couple of ways, and offer a question.
A: there is, today, a quasi-TFT environment. It is online dating. From the safety of an internet handle and a wireless router, women (today) offer IOIs that they never offer in person. What do I know if I receive an OKC IOI? Well, it means that the odds of being offered sex on the first date are 50/50, and on the second date? 90+%.
I’m no alpha, but I have a few virtues. Yet most men regard online dating as the last ditch attempt saloon, because it’s so inefficient. My profile is probably active two weeks out of 12, because that is all the dating activity I can handle. Goodness knows what would happen if all women, as a condition of being online, HAD to submit IOIs in a TFT compliant fashion.
So if it becomes socially acceptable for women to openly flirt in a lounge or airport gate, as it is online, why wouldn’t the same dynamic occur — the same 20/80 phenomenon that OKC documented? Only now, as BB noted, it will be even more efficient for a playa swordsman to crucify womenkind on a penis of gold? I think TFT, as outlined, superfuels hookup culture. This does not raise betas up, it funnels more women more efficiently to apex males. Remember, women won’t be shamed, nuked or punished for showing interest in a man; every man in the top 20 is suddenly going to have Don Draper options.
B. TFT: positing reciprocal signaling: great stuff. Actually, there is a female cohort that is expert at this, and a male cohort that knows what it means. I was 50 before I realized all the knockouts sitting alone in the King Cole Room were professionals. They have the power: they use the power: they escalate and close.
So with TFT we’ll see such behavior accrue to the benefit of Good Girls who will no longer be shamed for “slutty” behavior. Stephanie deploys her TFT to nab Good Guys, but as we know from the Prisoner’s Dilemma, optimal behavior and collaboration of that sort is usually discarded for power and the promise of privilege. So is a TFT girl going to deploy her winks and grins for the hidden value of a beta candidate? Or will she, mindful if not intoxicated by her power, focus more of her energy on, again, the top men? The top men, in that environment, will just play dumb as to their playa swordsman qualities, and drop cynical talking points like that guy Bloom is dating. They’ll reward her for her overture, because they know they’ll have a high probability of closing the deal.
Who’s to say, and surely SS will assign greater probity to her female cohort.
C. Okay. Assume Stephanie’s ideal world of identical impulses, values and dating techniques via TFT. Now: what has changed? Men already are trained to understand IOIs, men already are trained to respond to an IOI with escalation. And the mass of men today are invisible to women and not receiving IOIs, and avoiding the burden of escalation socially.
What’s going to make an invisible man today, visible tomorrow — simply because the woman is now signaling initial interest? Maybe a few guys will gain some confidence, via female encouragement, and improve their social presence. But seriously, the problem is that a woman’s acceptance of TFT does not transform an invisible man. TFT just becomes Tinder for Good Girls. Stephanie’s model requires her to discard, in her equivalencies, the reality of 20/80. It’s girl game.
***
Net: I just see an environment where men with options have more options, thereby closing, not opening doors, for presently invisible men. In fact, widespread TFT could really be the tipping point that mortally cripples assortive mating for good.
#131 “This is why Rollo and others say never take relationship advice from chicks.”
Or directions. For all the supposed unwillingness of men to follow directions, the inability of women to give directions is more amusing but seldom highlighted. “First you go down this way … by this way I mean the way my finger is pointing, except you have to curve around to exit to the left first. Then, you go through two, no three stop lights, and take the next right. Yes, it’s at another stop light, so it’s probably the third total, after the one you pass through getting the left exit. I think there’s a dress store right across the street, except it might be before that block. The parking is always terrible there. You’ll know you have turned on the right street when you pass the ATM and then the drugstore, because on the other street it’s the drugstore first and then the ATM, I think. You’ll come in a little while … I mean a little while, like a couple minutes, to where there’s a road in a narrow way between two big apartment buildings. That’s not the road to take: take the next road to the left. If you pass by that playground with the yellow twisty slide, you’ve gone too far.”
@78
Yeah. The boring, average beta chump should just eat right, develop strength, have interesting hobbies, dress well and improve his mind. Piece of cake. I mean, duh. Wasn’t that always bloody obvious? Why can’t that idiot just get it? Just work on yourself, you lazy cunt!
@ Han Solo 126
Here you will find that short of over-the-top personal attacks or trolling, we allow all comments.
I appreciate that.
I wasn’t offended by Yohami’s comment, but I didn’t think it met the higher standards of masculine debate. I’m sure he can take my criticism as well.
#156 ” But seriously, the problem is that a woman’s acceptance of TFT does not transform an invisible man. TFT just becomes Tinder for Good Girls.”
We hyenas have stripped the carcass clean and are cracking the bones for marrow now.
@YOHAMI 132;
Most of these men you know, do they “successfully” have the life of an alpha with a woman who gives them plenty of sex, no nagging, and cant get enough of? or do they “successfully” have the life of a beta who gets little or no sex, plenty of nagging, and a woman who looks at them with contempt while she writes their todo lists for the weekend?
For most men I know it’s somewhere in between. And for most, that’s good enough. They might not get all the sex they want, but they get more than they did while they were single and incel. The wife nags some, but she’s fun to be with sometimes too. They have kids and like being a dad.
Life’s not a bowl of cherries for everyone, but it’s not a bowl of shit either. Most people get by with what they have.
Ciaran,
“Yohami’s comment […] didn’t think it met the higher standards of masculine debate.”
That’s because Im a God and not a man.
Actually, I celebrate this stuff. There you go, trying to prove your cock is bigger (more masculine) than mine, because I dont measure up to your standards – playing an emotional game but accusing me of playing one. Priceless. The fun about it is that it works and it makes me want to beat the shit out of you, in a masculine “no no my cock is bigger” of course. Aint if beautiful how this works.
But were you not posturing as a beta? why do you assume that my alpha cock is bigger and be done with it? why rebel? I tell you no beta you step down and you want a fight. Why? do you feel unmanly and want your voice to be heard? do you want to alpha up? do you want my throne and my girls? werent you realized already?
Hail to the masculine spirit.
Alpha up bro.
@Taz
“But I also don’t think finding the wheat at the cost of de facto furthering a dangerous or counterproductive agenda gains much for the average reader either. And at some point there just might not be that much wheat and we have to consider that in light of “equality”, just how much latitude we would give a man who assumes a position of expertise, expounds as such, and renders a 10-20% hit rate while carrying forward principles that have been long since identified as deeply harmful to the mission.”
I agree that if there’s too little wheat then it’s not worth it.
I will admit that since I find too many women to be entitled and marinated in feminist superiority for women beliefs (while claiming to be the righteous victim only seeking equality) that when I find one that rebels against the fempire to some extent, though far from perfect, I tend to see the wheat and give a bit of a pass to the chaff.
So when I see Stephanie rejecting the feminist and blank slate orthodoxy with words like these:
I tend to then give more of a pass to the chaff like this, where I don’t agree that the book, The Game, saw women as the enemy and only wanted to use them–in the end, Style wants an LTR with his eventual gf and does point out some of the emptiness of putting the pussy on the pedestal and only pursuing that:
So, I probably do give more of a pass to women simply because the bar has been set so low by their self-absorbed sisters that any woman who shows some connection with reality and fairness stands out.
*why [DONT] you assume that my alpha cock is bigger and be done with it?
“For most men I know it’s somewhere in between. And for most, that’s good enough. They might not get all the sex they want, but they get more than they did while they were single and incel. The wife nags some, but she’s fun to be with sometimes too. They have kids and like being a dad.”
Good for them and beware of the girls night out, online dating etc.
On unrelated news, Aunt Giggles thinks that women’s preferences shifting 15% (relative to the population) through the menstrual cycle is a very small result.
Wow, I was not expecting this many responses. I want to clear up a few things I saw addressed numerous times.
1. The Game and The Art of Seduction- While I have read both of these books I don’t see anything wrong with the theories. However, as with all dating books it is what the reader chooses to do with the information. I have known men to use PUA dishonorably. The same way I have seen women use dating books to manipulate.
2. I intended Tit-for-Tat to be a tool. I very much agree with Han Solo that it can help men from going to overboard. TFT can be a great way to manage realistic expectations within dating.
3. TFT is a good strategy for the vetting process. I have known many men and women who get very excited and take their prospective dates at face value. Then later end up blindsided by information they could have found out earlier.
Re: the goals. The male and the female do not have gender-symmetric goals, which is to say that their respective strategies are different when the sexes are interchanged. For example if we suppose the female is trying to find the one best possible man she can get, then we don’t get to suppose the male is trying to find the one best possible woman he can get.
However, we CAN consider that the male is trying to get women to believe he is the best possible man they can get. In this way, the sexes CAN work together towards a common goal, but not symmetrically.
@Taz 134;
But is J4G a forum for married beta providers to provide a road-map for aspiring beta providers to follow-suit?
My point was that there are multiple mating strategies, beta provider being one of them. 50 years ago it was the norm, and the other strategies were exceptions. Today it’s not as safe and attractive as it used to be, but I think it can still be a valid choice for many men.
This isn’t necessarily a blue-pill proposition. One cannot close one’s eyes to the changes in society over the last 50 years and pretend it’s 1964 again. Being a beta provider is clearly more difficult (and dangerous) than it used to be. To do it successfully, a man has to be both a better provider and more attractive than his father or grandfather needed to be.
That’s where an element of red-pill awareness is valuable to the beta guy. He can be aware of and improve his elements of attraction, without necessarily trying to become a poon-slaying alpha.
#161 “And for most, that’s good enough.”
Says who?
@theasdgamer 135:
You ought to take YOHAMI’s ideas about gaming women very seriously.
I have no doubt he knows that topic well. But game is not the only element of successful mating behavior.
@Tilikum 139;
watch a married girl kiss her husband or kids, or fiddle with her wedding ring when an alpha walks by. she is trying to remind herself of her promise. hit the triggers right, that all falls away.
Sure. Society’s sexual restraints on women have been largely discarded, so they act more sexual. No surprise there. But it’s still only a minority of married men and women who actually have extra-marital sex.
#170 re: successful. One doesn’t get to define success like Barney defines specialness “Everyone is a success in his or her own way!” One doesn’t even get to define it relatively “He’s successful enough, compared to the starving Armenians.”
Game was invented to get women without having to resort to beta providership. As you get older you still need SOME provider traits (ie career success) to get decent women but the whole point of game is to invest as little as possible and get as much as you can quickly. Unless you really want kids… the provider route is a boring and expensive way to get women as even the hottest women lose their luster after some time. In my opinion, if a man can’t make himself attractive enough to get a decent woman he should just hire escorts. Maybe the bottom 50% of men should just do that… I dunno…
Ciaran,
But what’s your point?
ciaran:
no doubt that one can pull off beta provider successfully. But, “success” at being a beta provider means essentially that you’ve been able to “afford” the “price” associated with renting a uterus to conceive and gestate your offspring to term. After that, you must continue to “pay” in the form of support for your wife and children.
For some men that’s worth it, no doubt. Game, red pill, and attractiveness used to be gravy, a bit of “fun” thrown into the mix. For married men now, however, Game and red pill are little more than survival.
Today’s married man simply MUST learn game and increased attraction just to keep his marriage alive. He has to have it merely to keep his wife from frivorcing him and decimating the marital assets. Game is simply a matter of necessity, like acquiring sufficient water to drink. Fail at game, and it will likely mean emotional and relational death, as well as financial ruin. It will likely mean your children will be products of a broken home and will bear the brunt of all that means. At the very least, a man who cannot bring sufficient Game will live a life of mere subsistence and certainly one of near-complete sexlessness.
@Ciaran
I generally agree with what you’re saying at 168
That the vast majority of guys are never going to be poon slaying alphas. In fact, most don’t even desire it. Can’t say that’s ever been my goal.
But as you said, it’s a lot more risky and dangerous for beta guys than it was 50 years ago.
I’ve always been a proponent of simply arming guys with red pill knowledge so they can just go in to everything with their eyes open. What they chose to do with that knowledge it is entirely up to them.
ciaran:
For men contemplating marriage, the question is: Is the increased effort you have to put out worth it? You have to outperform your dad and grandfather in every respect. You have to make more money. You have to bring the hawtness, even in middle age. You have to bring the alpha douchebag when she wants it, and the beta comfort when she wants that. You have to literally dance like a monkey and work like a dog just to keep her from destroying your life and that of your children.
Is that worth it?
OMG Yohami you have me howling with laughter!
Stephanie, he does this to every girl who comes here, he’s chased a few off but actually he’s very keen and once you guys make friends, you’ll see he’s awfully funny. When it’s not you. Be strong! (hugs)
The rest of this is going over my head, whatever Bastait said was all very interesting but I understand it not. Ah well…I am not familiar with what game theory is, maybe it’s that.
BV makes total sense, as usual. All of you guys do. I have learned so much here (but apparently still not enough…)
@theasdgamer 147;
Yeah, a beta has to worry about Sneaky Fucker Game. I ran that a few times. Unless your wife is mate-guarding herself (maybe by becoming a whale), you’re gonna get cuckolded.
I’m not worried about that. Mating strategies are like anything else – they can be done well or poorly. I do the beta provider strategy well. I maintain my attractiveness, exhibit enough dominance, and provide the security my wife needs.
There seems to be the idea that beta providers are by definition losers and unattractive to their mates. I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s one strategy among others that can be implemented well if you know what you’re doing.
Ciaran,
“There seems to be the idea that beta providers are by definition losers and unattractive to their mates. I don’t think that’s true. I… ”
Ask women.
#168 “He can be aware of and improve his elements of attraction, without necessarily trying to become a poon-slaying alpha.”
As others are saying, the fact that a beta can’t slay poon is a sign of failure, and his lack of trying is merely awareness of his failure. On the other hand to the extent that he DOES improve his attraction, then he is moving directly in the alpha direction. If he has moral or other reasons then he can choose to stop becoming more alpha and thereby declare victory on his own terms, but he must recognize that his success, to the extent that it was success, was a result of becoming more alpha, strictly alpha, NOT moving in the direction of mixed traits.
Bastait at 93, I understand that one. And the problem, for the girl, if that the guy who is the swordsman is usually also the guy who will approach, versus the good guy who is shy. And telling the two apart can be damn near impossible, as I am finding out first hand!
This is how I met Mr. Smith, remember? We are both doing the IOI and then I approached him. And now I am trying to figure out if he’s just really really good at saying all the right things (likely) or if he actually is who he portrays himself to be (would be great but unlikely, according to many of you.)
However I very much appreciate all the weigh in, because you guys are actually helping me not get played and are pointing out stuff I miss. When I tell gal friends about Mr. Smith they all think he’s just dreamy. Women are suckers, as the swordsmen here I am sure can attest to.
@ Marky Mark 152;
I think we need to STOP looking at married beta providers as ‘successful’. Most of the time their wives are overweight, nagging, moody, and never want to touch them.
I wouldn’t consider a man with a wife like that to be successful, unless he was equally unattractive. Then he has as good as he deserves.
Biologically, success is having children, preferably three or more. Subjectively, a relationship is successful if you would rather be in it than not.
#173 “Game was invented to get women without having to resort to beta providership.”
Yes, which is why women don’t like the idea at all.
#183 I have three children from two wives, neither of whom were ever married to another man or had any other children. I consider all three of use terrible failures.
#183 ” Subjectively, a relationship is successful if you would rather be in it than not.”
Subjectively, the imprisoned men in Andersonville would rather eat topsoil than not. But the mud-pie maker doesn’t get to declare success on that basis.
To be frank, TFT (as it is called) – why not just say eye contact – is as much a technique as walking into the Bar is a technique. Great for women of course (like the author) who does not have to do anything, can happily reject any approaching male and claim that she never gave the signal in the first place and then demand the Police or any passing white-knight attend to her discomfort. For a better idea of seduction technique’s (IOIs) as used by females one can only recommend Simon Sheppard of Heretical Press who has some excellent stuff on-line as to the many and varied possibilities.
“TFT can be a great way to manage realistic expectations within dating.”
So realistic expectations is a problem to be solved? Agreed. But TFT does nothing to reign in or recalibrate a woman’s outsized expectations. And I’d argue that it is the average women who holds unreasonable expectations both in terms of her SMV, as well as the amount of risk/investment that should be required of her at any point along the lifecycle of the engagement are in need of a unilateral modification, long before men are asked to give ground they never really had.
The majority of men, if anything, suffer from a lack of properly calibrated self-assessment and appetite for risk, all with no incentive to reign-in any fledgling confidence or abundance mentality that might be accumulated by adopting behaviors and perspectives drawn directly from observing female behavior and choices.
And if women refuse to cede any blanket options or assume greater risk, again, why can this TFT expansion be seen as anything but greater expectations from the same population of men who are not losing out due to poor TFT/IOI in any way near the magnitude that they are as a result of being invisible and/or overshadowed by the bull alpha in the room?
So yes, beta guys, don’t get too far over your skis. Women, carry on.
@Ciaran
We’re not in disagreement, but I think we start splitting hairs with the many-ways-to-skin-a-cat mating strategies in light of just how much overlap there is within the sex-tingles-aggressive-attraction quandary zone. I think of it as venn diagrams, sure there are different circles, but the SMP has drawn those closer, there is now a great deal of overlap in the initial sexualized/attraction gateway. We mustn’t lose sight of this unifying condition.
Women struggle with this as well, in that the muddling of the no-strings, flings, sex-first, LTR, ect. motivates them to lower the price of sex to “compete” for top men with a corollary being that less-than-top men must increase their sex/social value to gain admittance and emulate as many of the attributes (of top men) they see being rewarded (working).
Which requires things like holding frame, aggression, dominance, and decisive leadership, else they face DQ as being fake alphas or remain invisible, all of which is exasperated when constrained by a TFT system that requires parity and (falsely) ignores obvious physical and social markers of attraction and dominance well beyond any simplistic model of truing-up, even by a man most adept at TFT/IOI.
@YOHAMI 162,
There you go, trying to prove your cock is bigger (more masculine) than mine, because I dont measure up to your standards – playing an emotional game but accusing me of playing one.
Valid point.
#182 “And the problem, for the girl, if that the guy who is the swordsman is usually also the guy who will approach, versus the good guy who is shy.”
No. No, no, no. No matter how many times we tell you, the swordsman is ALWAYS the guy who YOU want to approach, versus the good guy who you don’t want or are unsure about.
@ Bloom
You just told them apart. The good guy is usually the one who doesn’t approach.
@deti 175;
But, “success” at being a beta provider means essentially that you’ve been able to “afford” the “price” associated with renting a uterus to conceive and gestate your offspring to term. After that, you must continue to “pay” in the form of support for your wife and children.
I agree with that. It’s expensive but worth it in my opinion. I would rather have the wife and kids than the McMansion and the Ferrari I could have bought without them.
Today’s married man simply MUST learn game and increased attraction just to keep his marriage alive.
I agree with that too. The beta provider used to have a near monopoly on the mating market. Now he has to compete. Game gives him some of the tools to do that.
#192 “Now he has to compete. Game gives him some of the tools to do that.”
But if he becomes able to thus compete, then he doesn’t need to do the beta provider shtick in order to compete, and in fact he should drop as much of the betaness and providerness as he is able to, in order to compete better.
@deti,
Is that worth it? Every man has to answer that for himself. My answer is that most of the things you said, I planned on doing anyway. The only possible exception “bring the alpha douchebag” bit, but that was because I was suppressing my inner douchebag due to blue-pill programming. Freed from that constraint, I have more than enough arrogant bastard to get the job done.
But I don’t perceive that I’m dancing like a monkey. Perhaps it’s because the arrogant bastard comes out when I want it to, not when she does.
@ jf12 Ok, so any guy a woman finds attractive is a swordsman? Really?
@ Sir Nemisis And that’s the trouble! If the good guys won’t approach, then what?
@jf12 181;
As others are saying, the fact that a beta can’t slay poon is a sign of failure, and his lack of trying is merely awareness of his failure.
I would say not reproducing is the real failure. All those so-called alphas who have fathered no children are failures from the biological perspective.
@Bloom, I was musing about women believing a man’s shyness or nervousness could be a good tactic, then noticed a killdeer that nested in trash in a riprapped ditch. The next good rain the eggs are going to be dashed against the rocks. But the killdeer still does vulnerability game, doing the broken wing limp directly away from the eggs (which points directly back to the eggs, btw).
Vulnerability game is a losing strategy, and at best is merely an amusing novelty alternative for a man who doesn’t need to use it. The player almost never pretends not to be a player, but women almost always want to believe that he’s not serious about being a player.
Are they doing it successfully, or are their wives consolidating on the Beta Bucks side of hypergamy after their Alpha Fucks potential waned successfully?
#195 “so any guy a woman finds attractive is a swordsman”?
Yes, in the current marketplace there is no incentive for an attractive man to confine himself to one woman. Too bad. I know it hurts; it should hurt. But we keep telling you. Because so very few men are counted attractive enough by women (ask the men, not the women), then each attractive man has way more women after him than you want to imagine.
@jf12 193;
But if he becomes able to thus compete, then he doesn’t need to do the beta provider shtick in order to compete, and in fact he should drop as much of the betaness and providerness as he is able to, in order to compete better.
That statement only makes sense if we accept your definition of success as having sex with a lot of women. I don’t accept it.
If the standard of success is getting married, having kids, and not getting divorced, it appears that the men achieving these goals are mostly beta providers.
@ Bloom
Just choose a good guy and approach him. If he is too dense to realize you’re coming on to him, just bonk him on the head and drag him to your cave to have your way with him.
@ Ciaran
Like Hugo Schwyzer? Oh wait – he cuckolded a guy.
The basic fact is that the proportion of out-of-wedlock births is increasing on aggregate, which means that cads are doing correspondingly better in passing on their genes.
#196 I would say not reproducing as one wanted makes one a real failure too. A beta who is reduced (reduced, I say) to a secondary (e.g. sneaky) strategy is *failing* at the primary strategy. A recovery to a marginal threshold is evidence of *failing* to attain the desired level.
Correctly, nobody believes anyone else when they say “Well, maybe I preferred my one dry hard hamburger instead all your nice juicy tender steaks. Ever think of that, huh, huh?”
@Rollo 198;
Are they doing it successfully, or are their wives consolidating on the Beta Bucks side of hypergamy after their Alpha Fucks potential waned successfully?
I don’t know. If the beta provider’s goal is to get married, have kids, and not get divorced, and the beta provider accomplishes those things, how much difference does the presence or absence of the Alpha Fucks make?
The Alpha Fucks are a problem to the extent that they interfere with those goals, which they very well might do.
One man is attractive / has Game sufficient to successfully mate with a series of 100 attractive women, and produces one child with one of them.
One man struggles to be attractive and social enough to successfully mate with only one homely woman, but produces three children.
Which man has the best evolutionary potential?
@jf12 203;
Correctly, nobody believes anyone else when they say “Well, maybe I preferred my one dry hard hamburger instead all your nice juicy tender steaks. Ever think of that, huh, huh?”
But would you believe me that I like prefer my sweet tempered, feminine, affectionate wife who takes care of my kids, cooks my dinner, packs my lunch, and has sex with me when I want? That I would rather have that than all the transient poon I could slay in my best fantasies? That I most definitely prefer that to the old skanky poon that I could actually slay, given my actual SMV?
#200 My definition of me being a success with women would be simply that a lot more women would treat me well than currently do. I define beta primates as men who must provide bananas and grooming to a female to have any reasonable hope of sexual activity with her; it doesn’t matter if he “wants” to give his bananas away. Similarly an alpha is any man to whom women provide bananas and grooming in order to stave off Dread from him, meaning either avoiding him leaving her to have sex with a nicer woman, or him not hitting her as hard.
In terms of “best measure”, we have to have some measure of goodness of measure. I submit that, to include some men who would not be included by a strict N count, that we can easily say a man is a sexual success to the extent that he has agency. In other words if he chose to then he *could* have sex with a lot of women.
#206 “That I most definitely prefer that to the old skanky poon that I could actually slay, given my actual SMV?”
That much I believe, being in the same boat (Hey! Hi! (I’m sticking up my hand and waving, so you can see me in the crowd on this boat.)). I refuse to believe that any significant fraction of beta husbands currently gets sandwiches, much less sex on demand. And yes there are statistics and references.
@ Rollo Tomassi
It depends on whether the child was a son who will inherit his charisma and impregnate lots of women. The struggling beta is more successful in the short term, but the alpha could easily surpass him down the road.
In terms of being the Better Beta, I won. To my regret.
If a woman’s definition of ‘success’ is fucking a series of Alpha cads until such time that her SMV decays to the point that she’s no longer able to attract them and then seeks out a convenient, Beta provider who’s patiently waited until she was done fucking the Alphas to get married, have kids and not get divorced, then can I presume you call this a mutual success?
There are extremely few women who have anything of value (to men) to say on these issues. Stephanie Shephard ain’t one of them, judging from this piece of watchemacallit.
Re: reproductive success. As the “Sexy Sons” and many other arguments prove, a much better count for reproductive success is the number of grandchildren. The primary advantage is that the viability of your offspring is proven by the grandchildren. This points to your fertility itself as a heritable trait, which can only be seen across at least three generations.
Successful beta provider….. yea successful until she decides otherwise on any damn hamster driven excuse she comes up with. There is no successful beta provider, only successful up until now beta provider.
After a lifetime of watching wives of tier one and two SpecOps guys go whoring I think anyone arguing for playing the beta provider is a fool. Do you really think you’re in better shape then those guys? Or have a more tingle producing job? A more dominate frame then a guy who jumps out of planes @ 40k feet and doesn’t pull chute until 2k just so he can get shot at? Good luck sparky, you need it
Bloom, if the “good guys” won’t approach you, then it’s on you to approach them.
Good guys in quotes because let’s not mistake lack of balls for morality
Also I think Liz bailed after I called her on her childish debating.
“can I presume you call this a mutual success?”
Easy on the jokes, Im spilling my coffee.
tft is such a great strategy for women because it not only screens out undesirable men, it also enables women to pull a Sting operation.
Ciaran:
“one portion of the populace is still doing the beta provider strategy successfully – college educated men with decent jobs”
What if you lose your job? What if you become injured or disabled and cannot work? What if you have to take a much lower paying or less-prestigious job?
And what if, based on any of the foregoing, your wife’s alarms start alerting, her hypergamy kicks into high gear, and she decides to end your marriage?
These are questions I myself have asked.
What if your boss hits on her. Or hers.
Taz,
You’re reading more into this than I would. I agree that applying TFT as an overall approach is not correct, but I think the underlying the motivations are less asserting female supremacy and more “INTJ tries to impose unrealistic catch-all solution on the world.”
Having spent a lot of time around INTJ-like personalities, this is how this post comes off to me. Were it a female supremacy post, you’d get a lot more “rah-rah you go girl.”
Example: argued with a girl on Facebook about the Wage gap. Explained that the Wage Gap is at most a few percent and statistically insignificant.
Response: Rah rah I am a woman hear my roar, do not bother me with facts, you are a jerk!
That’s female supremacist.
This TFT is more an INTJ resolution to a social problem.
That’s how I am reading it.
Re: Sophistry. I think this advice is not so helpful to more mature individuals. I think it’s useful for helping young men and young women create some chemistry with each other in a “safe” way, or at least a way with which they would feel more comfortable.
On its own, TFT is not sufficient and may magnify previous SMP distortions, see BV and BB exchange above. It is not useful WRT post-college student populations. We know what calibration is.
College and high school boys may not.
It’s something that might be useful to young men. We’re not just talking GDP figures to talk about GDP figures, we’re talking specific stock investments.
“Response: Rah rah I am a woman hear my roar, do not bother me with facts, you are a jerk!
That’s female supremacist.”
How would you call #7
“Stop being contrary as if you do not understand the concept. If you are having trouble I advise clicking on the bottom like which is written by a red pill follower fellow writer I have collaborated with in the past. Here is the link if you are too stubborn and lazy to scroll up. 20/80…Psh…”
“You are being contrary. 4 comments in a row? really? Makes me question the extent of bias you have.”
Since we as males know it’s simply not true that women are good at this tft, i.e. women stink at rewarding the niceness of men with niceness from women, then one question is why do women want to believe it works?
WRT Ciarans’s point, I obviously agree, but I am highly invested in a certain, romanitcized view of Western civilization, that includes landing at Veracruz and sailing the Black Ships into Yokohama.
However, this should not be necessary to incentivize a man to marry. Men should marry because it is a good deal for them. Men should be giving up extremely little, gaining a lot, and bearing little risk.
It is extremely more generous than he would have received at any number of male-dominated forums I used to frequent. It wasn’t even really feminine.
For instance, she said click on the link, not “you have a tiny dick and obviously can’t get laid”
Because Hamster. If this works, I get high quality hawt guys on a socially acceptable “slow” method that perfectly fits into “it just happens” and excuses me from all accusations of sluttiness. It requires only minor “work,” and men still bear the brunt of escalation, and any men who escalate faster than I want (because they are ugly) can immediately be condemned in an apparently coherent intellectual framework.
Why women choose to BELIEVE it, is different than why it is WRITTEN, though. And just because women can hamsterize something doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Women hamsterize the hell out of DV laws, but some measure of DV laws really are good ideas.
#211 One good thing I noted about Ciaran’s otherwise impeccably feminine-imperative “how much difference does AF really make” question is that he partly answered it, that it could be problematic for the man in attaining his goals. It’s not quite the acknowledgment that women ought to please men, but it’s a start. I wonder if he wouldn’t mind telling here of his thoughts about the advisability of raising his daughters to make good wives, i.e. to ensure happy husbands.
#222
“Men should marry because it is a good deal for them. Men should be giving up extremely little, gaining a lot, and bearing little risk.”
This has never been the case. Nowhere, ever. It wasn’t even meant to be a good deal. Nobody ever said it should be a good deal. Men were told it’s their duty, simple as that. If you refuse to get married, you aren’t a “real man”, and if you aren’t a real man, you’re a nobody.
Irrespective of the Niagara Falls of comments on her thesis, mostly skeptical, I think we have to note that Stephanie precipitated one of the better threads in J4G’s recent history.
Are the Cads outbanging the Dads?
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/are-the-cads-outbanging-the-dads/
“All I want is to hold hands with a nice guy and walk and talk.”
http://thoughtcatalog.com/jessica-blankenship/2014/05/this-scene-from-louie-is-everything-every-fat-girl-has-always-wanted-to-say-to-every-guy/
Why aren’t women paying betas to fulfill their boyfriend experience?
“Also I think Liz bailed after I called her on her childish debating.”
I still lurk, Scfton.
And I’ll agree to disagree on our aforementioned disagreement.
But it seems to me if a proposal would amount to Christmas, New Year’s and their birthdays rolled into one for feminists it’s probably not a great idea for those who oppose feminists. And feminists hate traditional, conservative women even more than they hate conservative men so eliminating them “in protest” would only be a gift in their estimation.
My apologies for my “childish debate style”. I’ve actually checked out of the sphere for a while, but I’m with the sphere in spirit.
Grace and Peace,
Liz out
Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat. Tat.
Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.
O/T and not directed at anyone:
Tit for tat: I’ll show you my tats if you show me your tits.
@ Nemisis ROTFL
“Just choose a good guy and approach him. If he is too dense to realize you’re coming on to him, just bonk him on the head and drag him to your cave to have your way with him.”
I’ll keep you all posted on how that works out!
Trouble is you have to get to know a guy to know if he is a good guy, hard to tell that at first glance…
And @ jf12 Good looking guys can be faithful, too. My ex husband is 6’4″, tall, dark, handsome and while I am sure he could slay poon, he just wasn’t geared that way. Unfortunately, he had other problems though…alcohol, abusive, probably depression….he’s luckily gotten some of those things under control now. He’s a good guy, very good character (when he isn’t drinking)
After all the discussion I am curious is TFT more effective than booze?
“All I want is to hold hands with a nice guy and walk and talk.”
BS. Once she gets that she’ll keep upgrading her demands.
Nice video though.
“I’ll show you my tats if you show me your tits.”
Check your inbox.
Tit for tat *does* work wonders: Get a tattoo, and the tits are yours for the feeling.
Ok.
Still wading through the comments a bit, of which I think some of you are being a bit to harsh, and BV being the most lucid, I think this article is quite nice, and well-intentioned, but sort of useless for the hardest part for men – dealing with foundational attraction issues. No amount of George Bush “strategery” will overcome mild anti-game, bad venue choice, bad sitational awareness, or bad breath.
Example: my #1 piece of anti-game was the belief in the Christian model of sexuality as being normal. Which is entirely incorrect… people do not have a lifetime N of one. Merely dropping that belief, bolstered by some handy CDC stastitics, was all I needed.
Question for the OP: how do you define “success” in your dating life, since this works so well?
Am I successful?
jf, 228:
It’s like a broken record but I’ll say it.
Guys will start holding hands with and walking and talking with fat girls; will start dating and marrying fat girls, when girls start having sex with gammas and omegas.
@ 95 Han you might enjoy the book “The Mastery of Love” by Don Ruiz. It’s amazing, have read it many times, goes into just that you are describing.
ADBG
“Were it a female supremacy post, you’d get a lot more “rah-rah you go girl.””
The post wouldn’t have been invited into J4G if the supremacy were first-order. Facebook is femcentric, it is the progressive hivemind, no real discourse there or on twitter or anywhere else where the bar is set by the thought police.
I could be wrong in presuming this is a ‘male space’, but even so, one does not attempt to argue from a (known) minority position with a frying pan to the face. The post was academic and linguistic not just because of her probable myers-briggs, but because that is how you strategically appeal to the male audience; you speak their language. But this breaks down if language is not rooted in truth and fails to mature with logical integrity and utility.
And to tie it into BV’s examples of the cognitive dissonance in the SIW – or even just “average” women in general who have yet to ponder any of this, there are far fewer card-carrying feminists working toward their goals than there are women cashing the checks, not knowing who is paying, all while holding onto both the victim card and the empowerment card who can do just as much damage. The ball buster is DOA, kernels of accordance wrapped in femcentric ideology gets deeply discussed. Yeah, TFT/IOI/Escalation, good stuff, but what is different or new in this post?
The screeching feminists waving flags are obvious, it gets tricky though, when the dissonance is entrenched. You get disarming statements acknowledging certain red-pill-ish things, paying service, but then take two steps fwd and see them white-knuckling a go to FI position, or ten steps back, and see how the paying-service pales in comparison to the agenda being pushed.
Their own awareness of such is secondary, I see it, I call it out. Its not about intent either. I think she means well and applaud her work, but it doesn’t make it good or relevant or new or even valuable because it can be painted as a woman crossing the isle.
The evolution of that other blog should be seen as exemplary of how, when pressed, the FI, the agenda, and the trimmings of that power, those free call options, will win out. Even if it means: men back under the bus. I just keep a keen eye out for window dressing but arguably might need to moderate some baby/bathwater tendencies. But then elevating a piece of work because it is from a woman is no different than skewering a piece of work solely because it is from a woman. The ‘hostility’ is not ad hominem, its to the argument, which is not particularly robust nor novel nor actionable.
BV is right, solid thread. So there is that.
The joke crossed, Han, nice one.
Multiple baby daddies is “pervasive”; of ALL U.S. women with multiple children, about 28% used multiple fathers to get there. The percentage among the poor and urban is even larger: 59% of African-American mothers.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42364656/ns/health-childrens_health/t/us-moms-have-kids-multiple-dads-study-says
There are excellent statistics of “multiple partner fertility” when there are multiple fathers, maybe because of the implications for increased child support. However there are very sketchy statistics about the number of men who have multiple baby mommas. Again presumably because “they” don’t want their social planning secrets revealed. However one earlier study pegged the percentage at 17% when highly oversampled for poor and urban.
ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Publications/nsfg/confpresentations/S3.Fatherhood/Logan-Multiplepartnerfertility.pdf
And another study claimed 46% of fathers of children receiving state aid (TANF) had multiple baby mothers.
http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp130005.pdf
Good luck finding better numbers; I’d like to see some. I expect that the absolute number of men with multiple baby mommas is about half the number of women with multiple baby daddies, but I’m not emotionally invested in that outcome.
Liz! Yay! Hi!
to the fat girl mentioned at 228, I’ll paraphrase some advice I saw elsewhere, offered to a beta guy. I’ve changed it up somewhat so as to make it applicable to the fictional unattractive girl.
“Mating occurs in a marketplace. It requires competition, which depends on your value to the opposite sex in general, and with men similar to you in particular.
“No one promised fat girls a husband in every pot. No one promised that every homely girl gets a boyfriend or a date on Saturday night. You do not deserve a man, you have to win one; and then you have to keep him. Good luck.”
Re: Cad/Dad. I think something that frequently gets missed is that there is little incentive for a man with many exciting casual sexual options to remain in self-imposed abstinence until such time as his female equivalent shows up. That may or may not be a great strategy for his female equivalent, but the same guy can easily and simultaneously be:
Ladder A: A “Cad” archetype to 95% of the female population.
Ladder B: A “Dad” archetype to the top 5% of the female population.
I think some women do get this bi-strategic, Janus-esque quality of male mating preferences—in which, as BV has noted many times, risk-savvy males eventually take to viewing the SMP from a venture capital or PE allocation perspective—intuitively (and as a result I believe that these women have an intellectual edge in the mating mkt), but others just cannot help but attempt to impose a female sexuality preference set onto men and to assume that men want the same things, that the idealized male lifestyle design is identical to the idealized female one.
The Pitt and Brady types are enablers to Swordsmen everywhere because they keep the dream alive. Hope springs eternal. If all of these apex guys were just inveterate and transparent players, the jig would be up before very long. Instead, many women intuitively see themselves in the fantasy Giselle/Angelina roles (rather than in the pumped-and-dumped hordes) and revel in the awshucks, pronatalist grins of these “retired” players and fading gigolos.
Interesting thought experiment for you guys: a man of SMV5 comes into $500,000 with the condition that it *must* be deployed to optimize his long-term mating success.
1. How would we define “mating success” in this day and age?
2. How should he deploy the capital?
3. Have gains in female economic independence and related professional achievement changed his incentives?
Re: game theory/technicals. Without getting into the math, which can get quite tedious (and pretentious for me to engage in: I know we have some extreme quants—PhD theoretical physicists, etc.—on J4G), innovations in the field have embraced “unstable equilibrium” models in which strategic decisions made by market participants feed back into the information that is keyed into the front of the model (Soros describes something similar in his “Reflexivity” arguments), creating some fascinating cascade effects.
The takeaway here is that a study of strategic social dynamics will reveal tipping points and heightened sensitivity to small changes in incentives (even more volatile than typical microeconomic analysis and marginal-pricing would anticipate), and also generate pathological distributions in which small groups of “winners” make take all. Under some parameters you may also get violent boom-bust cycles a la Lotka-Volterra. Suffice to say that this line of research is rather useful for algorithmic traders working with financial time-series…
I hate to simply parrot Taleb’s many warnings against misusing Statistics 101 packages of mean-variance Gaussian naivete in studies of social dynamics, but sociology is still infested with this stuff (cross-cultural anthropology less so IME).
#240 In Case Anyone Was Wondering, relevant numbers for cads vs dads side discussion.
Don’t leave us, Liz!!!
@jf12 221 women are told over and o er in silly dating books and articles to never, ever approach. So there’s that too, women are told to sit on the shelf looking pretty till someone picks her up. And if good guys aren’t going to take that step well no wonder the cars are “winning” (no offense, Charlie sheen)
Cads not cars…
#243 Control of chaos was a big new topic 25 years ago
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.1196
with promises of better defibrillators and a lot of other promises. Mostly, the research has led to a lot of great math but a mere modicum of better management of excursions for industry.
#246 I disagree that good guys don’t approach; most men get turned down a lot more than any woman in history. I disagree that women don’t approach; the problem is that almost exclusively women approach cads (who CAN be cads because other women approach too).
@245 yes don’t leave, Liz!!!!! We miss you!!!!
ADBG
Oh and I’m not singling you out to pounce. I’m just noticing how some posts are challenged in different ways for different reasons and how those challenges are framed as “hostile”, “harsh”, overly critical, too this or too that, but other times it is 80 questions out of 100 on “explain to me what use is this, how this is relevant to xyz”, which is S.O.P. without the labels.
I would hope that certain elements of tone in the OP and OP responses would allow for certain reciprocal tone calibrations. Yeah, you want to come in and be all cold, calculating, confident and dude-like, cool, this is how I tell my alpha buddy he is talking out of his ass again…
@Bastiat, this should interest you:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/strictly-casual/201405/do-hotter-people-want-more-casual-sex
Here’s one Giggles missed in her doing ‘casual’ post – Do hotter people want more casual sex?
Men: Strength and Attractiveness Correlate with Both Desire and Experience
Women: Attractiveness Correlates with Experiences, but Not Desires
Most men are invisible today (in their youth, before they’re rockin’ the E Class (ably touted by Don Draper) in their early 30’s). That is fact one.
Fact two: half of men — and importantly, half of women — witnessed their fathers reduced to cardboard cutouts by the liberation ethos.
Fact three: if a female spies a male who does not look much, much more capable than her father, who lost what he cared about but not his 1040 obligations in divorce, tell me again why she would offer IOIs to the next loser in this magical TFT framework?
No, she will hustle the dude who cannot be touched by the trauma visited on the prior generation. That would be her generation. She’ll waltz with superman.
TFT is like watching the Fed pump negative % money to Jamie Dimon, and assuming Jamie isn’t going to exploit money the government is paying him to deploy. Hahahaha.
If women wish to rationalize the sexual marketplace, they need to assume that men and women commence the dance from unequal postures. Who does so? Currently, 27% of men under 40 have no interest in duplicating their fathers’ experience. Only women can fix that, and it’s not by being pleasant and normal and polite, in just another bar, lounge, house party, or dating two-step.
I’m totally in favor of TFT from the perspective of my self-interest. I won’t have to waste so much time. But then I will never let someone file claims, enforced by the sheriff, on my future again.
If TFT stratagems proceed, as outlined, kids like my son#1 will walk in pussy paradise. But the girls are deluding themselves if they think that my son thinks he’s got any chance of owning his life and his future, if he submits to the idea that anyone loves him absolutely, because he winked back and the moments that followed were good. First principles must respect unequal, not equal, objectives and conditions in the SMP.
J12, I agree, and would say much the same thing about game theory.
The big practical lessons for those operating in systems which feature these dynamics:
1. Use limited-liability silos, keeps costs low and options open—Real Options, ie. options to expand/scale up, delay, and terminate projects as new information becomes available.
2. Avoid wildly optimistic, commitment-heavy enthusiasms based on limited, non-representative, unusually favorable data sets.
3. Some paranoia is authorized—be concerned with downside risk and being blown-up because supposedly multi-sigma Catastrophes can and will occur with regularity. Conduct pre-mortem studies in which you assume that your project has failed and then look at what happens next.
4. Long-term forecasting in this domain is largely a fool’s errand. See Phil Tetlock for a long meditation on this.
I will leave it to others to apply these rules to the SMP…
And here’s the kicker for Ciaran from that article:
@ 246, all the more reason for you to approach.
Women hate to fix their own shit; approaching is about women fixing their shit.
You could be correct Liz, but I doubt it. As I said so 1)called conservative women’s presence in the electorate shifts the debate toward the feminist side so we have an openly pro and a less openly pro feminists political system 2) I doubt you know your own min on this topic. You spent an awful lot of emotional energy on a topic you claim you are willing to give. Women rarely know why they do things and the hamster spins all kinds of things into a false positive
#252 For women, the N curve peaks around average SMV (lets say 6), and above that, N decreases monotonically with SMV. Interestingly, the number of kids curve leads (or lags, depending on how you look at it), such that the SMV with highest number of kids peaks well below that (lets say 4).
@ 255 I noticed that to Rollo. I’m a nationally ranked power lifter and regionally ranked strongman….. testosterone makes you strong and horny. Seems like common sense to me
Laughed out loud at the mention of crucifixion on a golden penis.
TFT alone is too passive for men running bar/club game in my experience, though. Really it’s too passive for any place where another dude might go for the knockout while you try and work the jab. Fortune favors the bold.
@ Han 231
Your joke is stale. See #144. Heh.
@ YOHAMI 215
It’s even more of a success if the beta gets to raise the alpha’s kids.
@Deti:
Well, in fairness to “Vanessa” – the “Fat Lady” in the Louie CK episode – she’s quite candid in her “speech” to Louie. I didn’t read it as her being entitled; I am sure you and perhaps others in the forum may disagree. I saw it as a very poignant scene.
But I really want to thank Ms. Blankenship for her piece over at TC, for the Louie CK clip gives me the perfect icing on the cake for my upcoming Assortative Mating article here at J4G. It really raises some critical questions that those who champion AM, either never have thought of, or assiduously avoid (*cough Susan Walsh, cough*).
More on this, soon. Stay tuned…
O.
@asd
Mine’s worded better, plus I thought of it before you wrote yours!
@ YOHAMI 218
What if your boss hits on her. Or hers.
Or one of the alphas from her past finds her on fb. Or during girls’ night out. 00
Liz,
You de-cloaked! Glad to know that you are still around. Worried that posting that old picture as your avatar identified you in real life.
PS. Bloom misses you too and feels that she is outnumbered.
@ Han
Mine’s worded better
When it comes to pics, it’s Tits Fore Tats.
FTW
@ Rollo 211
Beta provider who’s patiently waited until she was done fucking the Alphas to get married
Why would anyone presume that she was done fucking the Alphas just because she married a Beta provider? The higher the N-count, the higher the likelihood of cheating during marriage for women.
@ Liz
I second Bastiat Blogger.
@deti 217;
What if you lose your job? What if you become injured or disabled and cannot work? What if you have to take a much lower paying or less-prestigious job?
I am not claiming it’s without risks – quite the opposite. You pointed out a number of them; there are plenty more.
These are things I worry about too. But worries are manageable. There are things you can do about them. I’ve worked hard to keep my skills current and valuable. I have good disability insurance. I picked the best woman I could find, and I maintain a relationship that is likely to withstand adversity
@ sfcton o e I get my picker figured out better maybe I will. Still confused hot to spot the real from the faux. If mr. Smith is what several of you say, then I am still picking poorly or too darn naive. Everyday here I realize more and more I do t even know what I do t know. Soon I likely will not talk to men irl at all, thinking they are all faux. Plus summer is my high season so I won’t have any time for anything soon…just as well. The party will be at chateau Bloom!
Yes Liz I do miss you! I always thought you had good insight. You and sfcton can agree to disagree. Look how he was to me at first and I think we’re practically partners in crime now! Even if I am too old, have kids, have hit the wall, can’t skin a deer, etc. if we can be friends, anyone can!
And a tidally scftom reminds me quite a bit of my brother, same job even! I am not the only good shot in the family…
Ci: “But is J4G a forum for married beta providers to provide a road-map for aspiring beta providers to follow-suit? Perhaps the reality is that this is indeed part of the mix. But that treads right close to blue-pill territory. And the build-a-better beta forums are typically moderated by older women married to beta-providers. Not high N, single men honing their game and locking down attractive women.”
Indeed. I see J4G as a frank discussion of men’s options. While I can’t speak for the owners, some are married, some not, some high N, some low… a good cross-section. Most everyone here beleives in good LTRs if not marriage, and there is no single mandated lifestyle map here. I personally champion the optionally that most modern women have.
Ci: “That said, the SMP is increasingly hostile to these men attempting to exercise their true assortive mating. If all routes pass through attraction-sex (path 1) first, and the venue is a bar, etc. then the continual “success” of these men fulfilling their beta-providing roles increasingly requires them to run the gauntlet alongside the swordsmen.”
Absolutely. The way out is through.
Sex comes before relationships. It took me until about 20 to intuitively get this, and once I finally did, presto… viable functional relationship with an attractive woman from a decent family. Girlfriend material!
And saying openly was is how I earned my ban. If, as a man, you can’t acquire a real one night stand offer, you are NOT relationship material in most women’s minds.
Level up.
Good guys get back out there! Please!
There’s more to life than video games and porn! Beware the vixens and look for the good gals. I know many great single gals!
And if anyone here is a hot shy quiet zen monk type, call me!
Bloom,
You really are in a pickle. I had thought of offering the same advice but, Sir Nemesis beat me to it. It’s always good for grins. If I do have an inspiration, I will share.
One thing, don’t be afraid to ask a guy out for something small. i.e. coffee. That might get the ball rolling. You’re a girl. you can be subtle.
Liz,
I’d like to see you back too. If you need anonimity, how about a new user name?
@jf12 224;
One good thing I noted about Ciaran’s otherwise impeccably feminine-imperative “how much difference does AF really make” question is that he partly answered it, that it could be problematic for the man in attaining his goals.
The fact is that women have more power to get what they want than they used to, hence the rise of the feminine imperative. Beta males lost their monopoly on resources that they used to balance the female monopoly on sex. I am not saying that’s good for men. It has made things worse for the beta man – extended female sexual experience and delayed marriage negatively affects his goals. Such women are less likely to marry, less likely to have children and to have fewer children if they do, and more likely to divorce.
But these guys still have to find the best deal they can get, despite their reduced bargaining power. The scenario Rollo paints is preferable to a life of loneliness, childlessness and involuntary celibacy for many of them.
I wonder if he wouldn’t mind telling here of his thoughts about the advisability of raising his daughters to make good wives, i.e. to ensure happy husbands.
I have only sons and don’t know much about raising daughters. If I had daughters I would hope that the very healthy and loving traditional marriage that my wife and I enjoy would serve as a good model for them.
@Rollo 255;
Yes, that supports my point. The majority of men do not stand out as particularly strong and attractive, so should focus on LTRs as their best mating strategy. I am one of them.
Sexual arousal is limbic.
Sexual arousal is limbic.
Sexual arousal is limbic.
Mammals fuck, reptiles fuck and insects fuck, there’s no mystery to why the big lion runs its pride or why women showed so much sexual attraction to the Chechen bombers or why the Dutch reporter excused the Afgan warlord for making her a sex slave.
Every game tenet in existence is predicated on invoking fear and compliance in women by shutting down the higher brain, albeit in a subtle and socially approved manner.
Social dominance, physical dominance, dark triad, aloofness, Negs, cockiness, jerk behaviour, louts, jocks, thugs, material status, height, pushing through the barriers, isolation, confidence etc. all operate on a limbic level.
Women simply cannot apprehend this as once the limbic drives kick in (which is larger in females) the higher brain simply rationalizes its unconscious choices (hamster).
Every beta trait is non confronting and safe.
@’270
Well.darling it takes practice to figure out these things. Which surely sucks on occasions but as long as you keep your legs together, no harm no foul…… damn I spelled that fowl like three times in a row. I miss water fowl season.
Re your brother, we are all versions of a theme.
@’275 another tradcon spouting the same old same old. No wife? Rent hookers. Hell most men will tell you marriage is far from guaranteed sex and hookers are cheaper then wives. Wives are resource hogs. Friend of mine told me he pays $1200 a month in alimony and has more extra money then he ever did married. Gets more sex now to. That is way to common of a theme to be a one off
@ 277
Laid out why bad boy/ bad ass etc game works so well
@SfcTon 214;
After a lifetime of watching wives of tier one and two SpecOps guys go whoring I think anyone arguing for playing the beta provider is a fool. Do you really think you’re in better shape then those guys? Or have a more tingle producing job? A more dominate frame then a guy who jumps out of planes @ 40k feet and doesn’t pull chute until 2k just so he can get shot at? Good luck sparky, you need it
Given the difficulty hardcore military men seem to have keeping their wives, while the mild mannered engineers I know aren’t having trouble keeping theirs, it seems to me they’re doing it wrong. Perhaps it’s the long assignments away from home. Perhaps it’s all attraction and zero comfort. Perhaps the value of all that hardass shit isn’t apparent to women. And perhaps those tough guys just totally lose their frame when dealing with women.
I’ve seen it before. Guys who cave to emotional pressure, who let their wives boss them around, or who become withdrawn and sullen rather than engaging emotionally. A lot of tough guys have no fight when the weapons are words and emotions.
@SfcTon 278
@’275 another tradcon spouting the same old same old. No wife? Rent hookers.
Hookers make bad mothers.
Ciaran at 280,
There’s little wrong with the men in the military. There’s something wrong and I attribute it to the culture affecting wives.
Sfcton is fully capable of fighting his own battles but, I’m jumping in to white knight for him hoping that I can state the situation with more tact.
You went off half cocked. Please say that you’re sorry.
@280
What exactly is “engaging emotionally.”
My experience is that any sort of emotional honesty is taken as weakness, and really the beginning of the end.
#280
“Given the difficulty hardcore military men seem to have keeping their wives […] A lot of tough guys have no fight when the weapons are words and emotions.”
So you’re saying your cock is bigger because it has emotions and bad bad alpha dudes dont therefore their little emotionless dicks are small.
If only women cared.
Spec op wives love tingles. If hubby ain’t around, they’ll go lookin’. Engineers? Meh, they produce tingles not so much. If he’s working late at the office maybe she’s hooking up with one of her alpha exes and he’ll never know.
Punish drama and other bad behavior by withdrawing attention. Reward good behavior by flirting.
“Punish drama and other bad behavior by withdrawing attention. Reward good behavior by flirting.”
+1
@Badpainter 283;
What exactly is “engaging emotionally.”
Engaging emotionally is when you engage in an emotional discussion and neither attempt to withdraw nor dominate. It involves emotional introspection and emotional communication. It requires both accepting emotional demands placed on you, as well as being able to place your own emotional demands on the other party. It can be an excruciating process for many men, which is why most of us tend to avoid it at all costs. Yet, it is an essential tool for resolving conflict with a female partner.
@YOHAMI 280
So you’re saying your cock is bigger because it has emotions and bad bad alpha dudes dont therefore their little emotionless dicks are small.
No, I’m saying my dick is small so I use my mighty mighty emotions instead.
If only women cared.
I seem to be the only one here who has a wife who makes him sandwiches every day. Perhaps the rest of you should take notes.
@ Ciaran
Hookers make bad mothers.
Worse than the school nurse who worked at her son’s high school and blew up her family with a nakie with a KU Roundball player that was posted on the internet?
http://www.f2bb.com/bbs/show_topic/969509
Her son must really love the attention. P
@ Ciaran 287
It requires both accepting emotional demands placed on you, as well as being able to place your own emotional demands on the other party. It can be an excruciating process for many men
Is this the part where your wife castrates you, then gives you sammiches to ease the pain?
@theasdgamer 285,
Spec op wives love tingles. If hubby ain’t around, they’ll go lookin’. Engineers? Meh, they produce tingles not so much.
That makes sense. High risk-taking woman marries even higher risk taking spec op hardass, because hypergamy. Smart but risk averse woman marries even smarter but risk averse engineer, because hypergamy. But spec op’s risky wife is cheating while the engineer’s wife is home reviewing the kids’ algebra homework.
Is this the part where your wife castrates you, then gives you sammiches to ease the pain?
It’s no hold bars emotional jiu-jitsu with women. Anything could happen. Protect yourself at all times!
Ciaran,
“accepting emotional demands placed on you, as well as being able to place your own emotional demands on the other party”
Sounds like emotional intelligence / asertivity
“It can be an excruciating process for many men”
Thats you again throwing men under the bus, aka your cock is bigger.
“Is this the part where your wife castrates you”
haha
“my dick is small so I use my mighty mighty emotions instead.”
Man, I find amusing that you’re trying to overpower men here, you started with me then you’re cockfighting other men, but in the name of beta.
I want to bring into your awareness that such behavior is not beta, but alpha or at least alpha wannabe.
If you do manage to make your point across and you end up triumphant, that places you at the top of our little male ladder, so you’re the alpha. With that your swagger and testosterone is going to go up, for a while, enough to give tingles to your wife though, before you get used to it and you need another fight.
“I seem to be the only one here who has a wife who makes him sandwiches every day.”
You seem to be the only one here trying to prove the size of your cock. I have an exmodel girlfriend who makes me sandwiches and whatnot. But why are we measuring things?
“my dick is small so I use my mighty mighty emotions instead.”
Here you’re not using your emotions.
“my dick is small so I use my mighty mighty emotions instead.”
Ok Ok I heard you. Let’s not get weird.
Ah, my point was that if you win be overcocking, you yourself defeat the beta defense you’re posturing. Shouldnt you be proving that beta is all that, by following? showing emotional range? tell me yes dear? something?
* if you win BY overcocking, jeez
“High risk-taking woman marries even higher risk taking spec op hardass, because hypergamy. Smart but risk averse woman marries even smarter but risk averse engineer, because hypergamy.”
As long as it’s hypergamy it’s not “beta bucks” and you’re relatively safe. You got her cuz her hypergamy = she’s not settling, you have margin to operate.
@ Ciaran
Last time I was out dancing I was standing by the fan cooling off with the wife of a veterinarian. He’s a very charismatic guy, but she was leaning into me and talking about hot flashes as I faced away. Very good looking gal for almost 50. She had several kids. She kino’d me heavily on the shoulder (like an 8″ long strip) and shocked me when we were dance partners at a group lesson. The vet was also at the dance bar, but he was otherwise occupied. His wife wasn’t home helping kids with homework; she was chatting me up and sexualizing with the comment about hot flashes. I could easily run Sneaky Fucker Game on her if I take my time. Create plausible deniability so that “it just happened.” There’s an example of your “risk-averse woman.”
I could talk about the other “risk averse” married woman who talked with me about STD’s the same night also in front of the fan and right after the vet’s wife. The other woman was solo.
Then there’s the “risk averse” wife who is out dancing solo all the time and who has chemistry with me and chatted me up for a half hour the other night and ground her hip into mine when we danced.
Unless the wife is engaging in mate-guarding behavior, be very suspicious. Going out solo dancing and sexualizing convo with men don’t count as “mate-guarding behavior.”
@288
That’s about what I expected you to say.
@Yohami 293;
Man, I find amusing that you’re trying to overpower men here, you started with me then you’re cockfighting other men, but in the name of beta.
Well, there are different kinds of alpha, are there not? There are sexually dominant and aggressive alphas who have sex with a lot of women. I’m not one of those. There are ambitious and socially dominant alphas who rise to the top of male hiearchies, the leaders of men. I’m not one of those either.
But there are the types who are assertive intellectually and who have a lot of confidence advancing and promoting their ideas. These are not necessarily alphas but something else entirely. Vox Day calls them deltas. I may be one of those.
But for the purposes of sex and mating, I’m a beta. I have fewer than 10 sexual partners, of which two were one-night affairs and the rest were long-term girlfriends. I’ve never picked up a woman in a bar, because I lack the social confidence and skills to initiate conversations with strangers. But I do well with women once I’m over the initial hurdle because of decent LTR skills.
@ Ciaran
It’s no hold bars emotional jiu-jitsu with women. Anything could happen. Protect yourself at all times!
Maybe start by not getting into the emotional ring with them where they control the frame.
#297
Yeah, risk adverse is not the same as cock adverse. I never helped a married woman cheat but the options were there.
This whole argument started when Ciaran disagreed with Yohami that all women are always looking to trade up and men are looking to be promiscuous. Ciaran said that Yohami’s take on things exists but there are also men and women that employ faithful monogamy as their mating strategy.
Yohami then offered a couple of disparaging comments like “good boy” and later said he didn’t discount Ciaran’s experience but thinks it’s a small minority and misrepresents the general picture. Ciaran responded that most of the beta husbands he knows are in stable marriages and haven’t divorced and that he personally gets as much sex as he wants and his wife treats him well.
Other married commenters seemed to jump in at some point in an attempt to douse the warm flame of Ciaran’s tales and that any narrative against the all-women-are-uber-hypergamous ingrates just waiting to cheat or frivorce can’t be allowed to go unchallenged, can’t be allowed to stand.
I’m more of the position that both things exist. There are a lot of ungrateful, cheating wives out there but there also a lot of good ones. Ciaran’s experience seems plausible as do the tales of cheating military wives. I know men and women that fall into both categories and so that’s why I tend to see the S/MMP as containing both narratives (or more accurately, distributed across a range of good to bad).
I don’t get the need to attack Ciaran and try to discredit his experience as if it’s some outlier that doesn’t exist. I’m willing to take most of the commenters’ experiences at face value and construct a distribution from that and that leads to a some good, some middling and some bad marriages, women and men out there. I definitely think women’s character has shifted to the bad over the last 50 years, with more and more feeling entitled and acting badly but there are still many good ones out there.
Also, I see nothing wrong with Ciaran starting to deliver a few barbed comments since he was civil at first but continued to take incoming fire. He has the kind of married and family life he wants. Unless you’re going to claim he’s a liar or just making shit up then he must be doing something right, and a huge part of that is in having chosen well, along with remaining attractive enough to his wife over the years.
I think Ciaran is being sincere.
As long as people are being sincere and honest then one should work to include their anecdotal data points into the whole picture rather than trying to find a reason to eliminate data points that don’t match one’s current theory of things.
@ theasdgamer 297,
Last time I was out dancing
But that’s a selection bias, don’t you see? Of course all the sluts are going to be out dancing!
The boring wives are at the coffee shop with their ladies’ book group. If they start feeling you up while you’re in line for your cappuccino, maybe I’ll start to worry.
Han,
Actually I dont see any argument, I see a bunch of guys measuring cocks. I win though. Beer?
@Yohami
There is an argument going on, as to whether Ciaran is an outlier or representative of a large part (perhaps a large minority) of the population (notice, I didn’t say majority; I just don’t think he’s an outlier).
“any narrative against the all-women-are-uber-hypergamous ingrates just waiting to cheat or frivorce can’t be allowed to go unchallenged, can’t be allowed to stand.”
Well it’s not all women because of NAWALT, NAMALT, and NATALTATT (not all things are like that all the time)
But of course Ciaran’s case can exist and his story can stand. We’re six billion(?) people, even a minority can be a lot.
@theasdgamer,
Maybe start by not getting into the emotional ring with them where they control the frame.
I’ve learned I can hold my own. And avoiding the issue only makes it worse. If you confront the issue, you can choose time and place for tactical advantage. If you avoid, she will just keep ambushing you when you least expect it.
Han,
I thought we were just discussing NAWALT.
“There is an argument going on, as to whether Ciaran is an outlier or representative of a large part””
How are we supposed to settle that?
If he knows a lot of beta men in happy enough low-contempt high-sex marriages that are not going to divorce ever, I dont want to fight his reality. I’d rather take ADN samples and inoculate the rest of the population.
@ Han Solo 302,
Thanks for the clear summary of the dialog so far, and my position in it.
I see nothing wrong with Ciaran starting to deliver a few barbed comments
I’m just pulling chains. I would add a
after them, but that seems kind of girly for this forum. After all, we’re measuring up our metaphorical dicks according to Yohami. I’m quite enjoying the conversation.
Yohami, it depends what % we’re talking about with NAWALT. If it’s 2% or 5% then, yeah, we can safely generalize to just talk about women are like that. But if it’s 30 or 40% that are the NAWALT then that’s a large % and bears more attention and we should learn how to find those women.
As to how we can get to that number, well, we see in the US census and other data that the ever-married-and-divorced levels approach a bit over 40% for boomers. Gen-X and younger are harder to determine (because they haven’t lived long enough to know what their eventual ever-divorced rates will be) but they may approach a 40% rate of ever divorcing. Perhaps some studies show slightly higher divorce levels. At any rate, if we take 60% of all marriages as not divorcing and even just half of those as happy marriages then there’s 30% of all ever-marrieds. Plus add in 1/4 of the 40% that married where we could assume the man was a dick and it wasn’t much the woman’s fault for another 10% of the total (this still allows for 3/4 of the divorces to be either more the woman’s fault or a mix) and there we have 40% of women who ever married who are good partners.
Obviously, those are just estimates but they’re plausible rough estimates.
*inoculate against the current SMP
I am saving this under my `best of` tag in evernote.
Thanks for sharing this cool piece. -dcl
So in an unexpected development, just got off the phone w Me. Sonoma who I have not talked to since he invited me in the trip and to go motorcycling after. Very in depth and long conversation about strategy for chateau bloom, which he gets being in the biz himself. He said many very nice things about who I am and what motivates me as a person (love of people and helping them not money or status) and how it works for me but also doesn’t which I would agree. I have known him 10 years and thru his marriage and divorce and my divorce and a serious ltr fail since (1 year ago) and so there has been no artifacts or pretense. He knows who and what I am. Not that I am saying we should date but maybe, maybe I should think about this….. Hummm. Time to reconsider those in my friendzone? Hummm.
Ciaran-
Your strategy of picking the venue for emotional “talk it out” sessions seems a good one in my experience. To you and everyone else here, I would pose this question: Do you feel that a woman’s propensity to emotionally “ambush” you (besides the occasional fit of insecurity that pretty much every woman will have once in a while) speaks to her level of respect for you as a man she needs to work to keep around? It would seem to me that things get really, really quiet on the emotional front to the degree that she feels like she’s lucky to have you, barring the occasional need for some reassurance, and this has been my experience. But my experience is limited to unmarried relationships where there’s obviously the expectation that she needs to make it worth you staying. I realize that in a marriage, familiarity could make the emotional grappling a more frequent occurence because she now “has” you for good. Would be curious to hear some of the married guys take on it to see if I’m right.
Mr. Sonoma is in many ways my polar opposite. Logical, chemist, pharmacist, optomotrist, fact based, although also a hopeless romantic. Hummmm. Sensory overload. Bloom cannot compute. Needs time to think…
I’d like to make a brief comment.
Mr. Ciaran is here at my personal request and invitation; I reched out to him after witnessing his treatment over at HUS, where he was essentially banned. I invited him here because I felt that he presented his views well and argued his points with grace and class.
I would remind my brothers participating in the forum, that ours is a venue that has a wide cross section of Men from every walk of life. Some of us are married, others not; some of us wish to be married, others not. Some of us are older, others younger. Some of us are Black, others White, and still others of differing racial backgrounds. And so on.
I do not think we serve ourselves well when we attempt to poo-poo the experiences of one Man because what he says runs counter to what we’ve experienced and/or believe; instead, we should look upon those instances as lessons about the complexity and possibilities of life for Men in our time. That does NOT diminish or dismiss the experiences of Men who encounter other things in today’s world; it merely means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach or reality here. We would all do well to bear that in mind as we move forward.
On a related note, I want to deeply thank the forum for their taking the highroad with regard to Ms. Stephanie’s piece today. She presented her ideas well, and you all have proven to be thoughtful, careful thinkers in response. Your challenges to her positions prove that it is entirely possible for a Red Pill Manosphere forum to not only entertain, seriously, a point of view that may run counter to what is par for the course here, but that we can engage a lady in respectful yet spirited, candid debate and discussion – which puts to bed the lie that the Manosphere writ large, is shot through with bitter losers who cannot get laid, LOL.
This is what J4G is all about – we do not need to denigrate others in order to make ourselves look bigger. After all, we work very hard to get the truth and the facts and present them to our readers, along with presenting a wide array of viewpoints. And we will keep that trend up, Inshallah.
Thanks brothers! Let’s keep up the great work we’re all doing together.
O.
And I Gree w Han about the idea that there is this subset, both male and female, that still seeks a traditional life and have not accepted the memo that its no longer an option…. It may indeed be a huge risk, but done well a huge reward.
Dating bites, IMHO. But to each their own…
@Obsidian
Thank you. It made for an interesting debate on J4G today.
Ciaran: “I seem to be the only one here who has a wife who makes him sandwiches every day. Perhaps the rest of you should take notes.”
Dinner, not sandwiches, but close enough. I’m at work during sandwich time.
You remind me of the old MegaMan who had lots of good points, before he went full snarky feminist.
@stephanie hope you will hang out!
we could use a few more ladies here… Not that it’s about me but I miss ‘em!
@ Jakes
I’m running Dread, so I’m an outlier. I’m also autistic, so I’m an outlier in that sense also. I have triggers that are almost impossible for me to control if I’m not watching. Sometimes Mrs. Gamer ambushes me and hits a trigger and I lose points. She knows it’s cheating for her to do that and I withdraw attention if she does that.
…familiarity could make the emotional grappling a more frequent occurence because she now “has” you for good.
I don’t agree with that. Grappling is part of the mechanism of mating and has nothing to do with commitment. See my post which explains some ideas about grappling: http://theasdgamer.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/sexual-macrodynamics/comment-page-1/#comment-15
And in other news I saved a life today. A baby blue jay. They nest at my place every year. I heard all kinds of squawking so I went to investigate. There was a cute baby bird on the ground w the neighbor’s black cat sitting right there, the baby birds parents desperately nosediving to drive the cat off. So I chased off the cat, calmly caputred the baby bird, put it and a frew branches up in the tree and hoped for the best. The bird parents came and guided it to safety, hop by hop up the branches. My good deed for the day is done, my fame among blue jays achieved. Life isn’t perfect but it’s still good! Gnite!
#321
theasdgamer, can you clarify what you mean by “I’m running Dread”? What specific behaviors toward your wife does that entail?
#228
So apparently women are generally convinced that the treatment doled out by beta chumps to fat women is as callous, widespread and humiliating as the treatment doled out by average women to beta chumps? Really?
@ OTC
No comparison. MegaMan is feminine imperative through and through. Ciaran simply kept up the manhood attacks that started with http://www.justfourguys.com/attraction-game-theory-guest-post-by-stephanie-shepard/#comment-31419
In general, I agree with Ciaran’s elevation of the beta lifestyle as superior. In today’s reality, however, one has to consider whether it really makes sense to hold up the beta lifestyle as ideal when it is so strongly disincentivized.
@ Han Solo
I think this is also applicable to the search for unicorns. One should remember that unicorns don’t exist. AWALT. At the same time though, SWALLTTO (Some Women Are Less Like That Than Others). We should recognize this and incentivize women who’re less like that.
#316
Lulz. Now even men like Ciaran, who advocate Marriage 2.0 for betas, get banned at HUS? Wtf? I have to say I find THAT somewhat surprising.
#302
I don’t think the issue is that Ciaran is lying or making shit up, it’s that he’s bound to put a positive spin on the beta strategy he follows. A single man like Yohami, for example, has options in life. He may decide at one point that marriage to a particular woman, either abroad or not, is a good idea after all. He may already objectively be a good catch in many women’s eyes, or otherwise he may work on his beta qualities. But a married man has no options. The jig is up. There’s no turning back. Trying to rock the boat is a sure way to financial ruin, social ostracism and legal Hell. You can only try make the best of the situation you’re in.
So yeah, of course Ciaran is going to claim his strategy is successful. What else is he supposed to do? Admit the opposite? Admit that he screwed up? I’m not saying he did, but it’s always in the cards if you get married, isn’t it? Is a mother likely to even contemplate the notion that having children was maybe a bad idea after all? What is she going to do about it? Kill her spawn?
On the other hand, it simply seems that he uses a different definition of male success than Yohami and others use. His definition is apparently blue pill, and aligned with the common consensus in every society: if you’re a beta and some woman graciously agrees to incubate your lousy sperm, count yourself as a winner in life. Why? Because you aren’t in any position to expect more from life. You’re just a beta after all, a faceless, expendable, interchangeable bag of human tissue. It doesn’t matter what happens to you. It doesn’t matter how much money you waste on your spawn and their useless college degrees. You may get frivorce-raped and lose visitation rights, you may get cheated on etc. None of that matters, you entitled twat! Count yourself lucky that you managed to reproduce! You weren’t going to have hot, steamy sex with numerous enthusiastic women you’re sexually attracted to anyway, were you, bitchboy? But surely you weren’t going to resort to fapping throughout your life either, were you?
By the way, let’s not forget a fundamental rule of all societies. The great majority of men who manage to get laid in the first place find their sexual partner, or partners, through their social circle. Your cousin introduces you to someone you might like, one of your classmates knows someone you might want to check out, you get introduced to your brother’s friends, that kind of stuff. Most men throughout history have not done cold approaches and never will. Simple as that.
Nem: “No comparison. MegaMan is feminine imperative through and through.”
I meant the OLD Mega, not the current incarnation.
The old MM might say “marriage isn’t as bad as you say” and have positive things to say about women, most of which I would agree with, and I used to like him.
The current model (and really everyone else there) is just a Manboobz armed with GSS data, trying to prove that water isn’t wet in aggregate, even if you yourself are soaked.
Plain Jane did an excellent job of PsyOps there.
@ Bud 323
theasdgamer, can you clarify what you mean by “I’m running Dread”? What specific behaviors toward your wife does that entail?
I told my wife I was going to get a gf. I go out dancing without her several nights a week. I did not get a gf, however. When my wife corrected her behavior, I told her that I was no longer longer looking for a gf. However, my wife is now very insecure and Dread is effectively still running whenever I go out dancing.
@Jakes 314
Do you feel that a woman’s propensity to emotionally “ambush” you (besides the occasional fit of insecurity that pretty much every woman will have once in a while) speaks to her level of respect for you as a man she needs to work to keep around?
I think it speaks to the need of women to maintain emotional contact. It’s important for most women to check on a regular basis that there man is there emotionally for them, because that is women’s primary metric of the relationship and the source of her security. If they perceive a lack of contact, they will escalate by initiating conflict or drama. If the man evades conflict (as men are wont to do), she can’t stand it and will “ambush” him whenever the urges get the better of her.
Since ambushing is her reaction to her man’s emotional evasions, it’s better to take the initiative to confront the issue, as I mentioned earlier.
So no, I don’t think it’s a matter of respect, it’s a matter of emotional need. In fact, it may be inverse to respect. If she loses respect she won’t bother, and when she stops bothering, she may already be checking out.
It would seem to me that things get really, really quiet on the emotional front to the degree that she feels like she’s lucky to have you, barring the occasional need for some reassurance, and this has been my experience.
That behavior suggests a new relationship where the woman is still trying to snare the guy so is on her best behavior. In a marriage, when things get really, really quiet on the emotional front, it is time to worry.
Ciaran,
What did you do to get you banned?
“So no, I don’t think it’s a matter of respect, it’s a matter of emotional need. In fact, it may be inverse to respect. If she loses respect she won’t bother, and when she stops bothering, she may already be checking out.”
True.
Where do we stand today on the quote that ignited the flame wars yesterday?
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
I keep calling bs, raise hands?
@Obsidian 316;
Thank you for the invitation. I’ve enjoyed the lively conversation here. I agree that “there is no one-size-fits-all approach or reality here”. I defend the case that marriage 2.0 is possibly the best option for a certain subset of men, despite all the risks and drawbacks. I certainly don’t expect universal agreement on that point, but I think most will agree that a certain body of red-pill knowledge will benefit men whatever option they end up choosing.
@ YOHAMI 335
Where do we stand today on the quote that ignited the flame wars yesterday?
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
I keep calling bs, raise hands?
I still think that it’s vague. Stephanie’s response about that didn’t clarify much.
Regarding emotional contact:
Husbands should give attention to well-behaved wives, including emotional attention, since Paul commands us to “cherish” our wives. However, when wives ambush their husbands emotionally, this is most likely a power play. I don’t think that this necessarily has anything to do with insecurity. Insecurity manifests itself in whininess, attention-whoring, and similar childish behavior from a position of weakness.
@OffTheCuff 319
You remind me of the old MegaMan who had lots of good points, before he went full snarky feminist.
MM is Susan’s chief ankle biter now. Annoying but harmless.
@Sir Nemesis 326,
In general, I agree with Ciaran’s elevation of the beta lifestyle as superior.
Thanks, but that’s a stronger claim than I’m making. I think the beta provider lifestyle may still be the best option for those who are naturally inclined to it and can do it well. I think this group is mostly the upper betas – those with enough economic skills to earn a good living, enough executive skills to keep their life in order, and enough emotional skills to maintain a LTR with a woman.
@ Höllenhund 328;
Now even men like Ciaran, who advocate Marriage 2.0 for betas, get banned at HUS?
Susan is not in a good emotional state. Anything with a hint of red-pill sets her off, and her “defense against the dark arts mod” SayWhaat is even touchier. Those two remind me of women who are still seething about their exes, who are furious at them but can’t get over them, even though they themselves initiated the divorce.
So basically, I said some things that set off their hair trigger, and didn’t back down but argued my case as I’ve been doing here, and got banned for my efforts.
#329: I don’t think the issue is that Ciaran is lying or making shit up, it’s that he’s bound to put a positive spin on the beta strategy he follows.
Sure, we all self rationalize to some degree. The hamster lives in us all.
#300: The great majority of men who manage to get laid in the first place find their sexual partner, or partners, through their social circle.
Good point. That’s how I found all my partners. I can’t cold approach to save my life.
@ Ciaran
The great majority of men who manage to get laid in the first place find their sexual partner, or partners, through their social circle.
Good point. That’s how I found all my partners. I can’t cold approach to save my life.
I was going to say that social circle didn’t help me, but actually, all my partners came through my social circle as well. Funny, me being autistic and all. However, cold approaching gave me some skills that I needed, such as the ability to read IOI’s and run my natural game. Being narcissistic helps to compensate a lot for my autism.
@Ciaran:
” I think it speaks to the need of women to maintain emotional contact. It’s important for most women to check on a regular basis that there man is there emotionally for them, because that is women’s primary metric of the relationship and the source of her security. If they perceive a lack of contact, they will escalate by initiating conflict or drama. If the man evades conflict (as men are wont to do), she can’t stand it and will “ambush” him whenever the urges get the better of her.”
O: The following passage from The Evolution of Desire may illuminate Ciaran’s statements for the audience:
“Moody partners (Editor’s note: Women) can be costly becauase they absorb time and effort. Palliative procedures, such as efforts to get the partner out of the bad mood and putting one’s own plans aside temporarily, absorb energy at the expense of other goals. Woman impose these costs on men as a tactic for eliciting commitment. A moody woman may be saying, “You had better increase your commitment to me, or else I will impose costs on you with emotional volatility.” It is one tactic in women’s repertoire for eliciting male commitment. Men dislike it because it absorbs effort that could be allocated elsewhere.
Moodiness also functions as an assessment device to test the strength of the bond. Women use moodiness to impose small costs on their mates and then use men’s reactions to the costs as a gauge of their degree of commitment. Men’s unwillingness to tolerate these costs signals that their commitment is low. Men’s willingness to tolerate these costs, and to be responsive to the increasing demands for investment, signals a greater level of commitment to the relationship. Either way, the woman gains valuable information about the strength of the bond.
Neither the functions of moodiness nor the functions of reserve require conscious thought on the part of the actor. Women need not be aware that they are attempting to test the strength of the man’s commitment. Men need not be aware that they are trying to minimize their commitment to reserve some for efforts outside the couple. Like most psychological mechanisms, the functions of conflict over emotional constriction and expression remain hidden from view.”
pp. 149-150, Chapter 7, “Sexual Conflict”
O.
Obs, Ciaran, Evolution of Desire
“Women use moodiness to impose small costs […] Men’s willingness to tolerate these costs, and to be responsive to the increasing demands for investment, signals a greater level of commitment to the relationship.”
True.
Tolerate + be responsive = security and comfort.
Boundaries + aloofness = attraction and respect.
Mix your poison.
#336
Well, yeah. If you word it in such a careful way, adding “possibly” and “certain subset”, there really isn’t much to disagree with. Although it kind of makes you sound like a lawyer.
@Obsidian 316;
@Ciaran:
“Thank you for the invitation. I’ve enjoyed the lively conversation here. I agree that “there is no one-size-fits-all approach or reality here”. I defend the case that marriage 2.0 is possibly the best option for a certain subset of men, despite all the risks and drawbacks. I certainly don’t expect universal agreement on that point, but I think most will agree that a certain body of red-pill knowledge will benefit men whatever option they end up choosing.”
O: True. I know it’s not something many of our Red Pill brothers may want to hear, but as I’ve pointed out several times before, some guys simply cannot “do” “much better”. For whatever reason(s). That’s just the plain truth of it. For some Men, their best bet is getting hitched. It is, what it is.
O.
#340
The thing that should be added to that, of course, is that the social circle of the average Western man is pretty much not worth jack sh*t. After all, what we’re talking about is an increasingly atomized society of transient lifestyles, where a growing segment of people don’t have siblings or cousins anymore due to demographic collapse.
“The great majority of men who manage to get laid in the first place find their sexual partner, or partners, through their social circle.”
O: Well, now that you bring it up…
http://obsidianraw.bravejournal.com/entry/135235
Comments?
O.
#259 yes. The passivity of ftf makes it work better for girls, not guys.
#288 take notes about what? Men WISH women worked properly, such that when men input bananas and grooming then women output sandwiches and sex, but almost all women are broken almost all the time, and don’t stay fixed.
#303 “The boring wives are at the coffee shop with their ladies’ book group. If they start feeling you up while you’re in line for your cappuccino, maybe I’ll start to worry.”
That’s one place they hang out. To my chagrin, I fit in well in groups of boring ladies, being simultaneously one of the gals and the life of the party.
#345 In addition to fragmentation, there is the pre-deselection. Men who don’t get around much also don’t have women as facebook friends.
@Höllenhund2
“So yeah, of course Ciaran is going to claim his strategy is successful. What else is he supposed to do? Admit the opposite? Admit that he screwed up? ”
But why the need to disbelieve him, as inferred by your question here? Basically, you seem to think that any man who marries, has kids and provides for them screwed up. You have the preconceived notion that all men who do so are miserable and being manipulated and screwed up.
The men who come on here and confirm the pessimistic narrative don’t get similar questions. But anyone who goes against it does.
But what advice would you give to betas who do want to have a woman and kids? Or to those who had them long before the sphere even existed?
You don’t seem to offer much advice to them besides saying you screwed up, which isn’t advice.
Ciaran seems to bring a mix of dominance, status and comfort traits that works for him and his wife. And he’s learning and accepts red pill truths (though maybe you’d call his views purple) and applying them.
But the question is, what would you have him do now? Apply red pill truths to his life and family to make them better? Or just accept that the game is rigged and it’s impossible for any average man to be happy in marriage and divorce his wife so that she can’t frivorce him?
As to his “lousy sperm,” well, whether he’s blue pill or red isn’t going to change their quality. Most men are not top men and don’t have top sperm so what are you suggesting they do? Voluntarily weed themselves from the gene pool?
#339 “I think the beta provider lifestyle may still be the best option for those who are naturally inclined to it and can do it well.”
Yes, in fact most men are born work horses, and cannot compete as thoroughbreds. Yes, it’s nice to make lemonade out of the lemons life gives you, but. There is absolutely no question as to whether it would have been MUCH more preferable for any given beta to have been an alpha instead.
@Yohami 335
“Objectively,” most women want a partner that is better than them and many will only accept one that is better than them–hypergamy.
However, it’s likely that many women have inflated views of their own value and thus they think that the higher value man really is her equal.
So:
Hypergamy + Hamster = Equal Mate
@ Jakes:
“Do you feel that a woman’s propensity to emotionally “ambush” you *** speaks to her level of respect for you as a man she needs to work to keep around?”
Yes, more or less. Ultimately it speaks to who has the power in the relationship. But, a woman’s emotional ambushes aren’t always about lack of respect or even about power differentials. Sometimes they really are emotional issues that need addressing. Sometimes they’re shit tests.
“familiarity could make the emotional grappling a more frequent occurence because she now “has” you for good.”
It’s not the familiarity; it’s about who has the power in the relationship. If you don’t exercise dominance in the marital relationship, it leaves a power void. If you don’t fill that void, she will.
#285 +1. The key to using behaviorism in wife management is to never do tat first. I wasn’t so much a supplicant as merely a romantic, bringing her flowers all the time for no reason. That works worse than anything in getting her to do right.
#354 I agree. Her emotional hostage taking is never about her seeking to improve the relationship or whatever someone else was musing. It’s always about her abusing her possession of the lone vagina to use her husband as an emotional tampon.
“There is absolutely no question as to whether it would have been MUCH more preferable for any given beta to have been an alpha instead.”
I should have been born a king.
“Her emotional hostage taking is never about her seeking to improve the relationship or whatever someone else was musing. It’s always about her abusing her possession of the lone vagina to use her husband as an emotional tampon.”
Well, that’s a little stronger than what I said. The “emotionality” is not usually about improving the relationship. Sometimes it’s about getting her emotional needs met, occasionally at the relationship’s expense, occasionally as an emotional tampon. But mostly it’s about her filling a perceived power void.
@ Han:
“I should have been born a king.”
Guess you’ll have to settle for being the captain of the Millenium Falcon.
@deti
Well, I did become a general in the Rebellion.
And what was I thinking? Why didn’t I chase after Darth Vader in his TIE fighter and blast him instead of just letting him get away?
I would point out that Stephanie’s TFT is more or less what this guy : http://www.evanmarckatz.com/blog/ calls “mirroring.” He isn’t full on red pill (or maybe he hides it well since his clients are women) but he is frequently reminding women that they have to deal with men as they are and not as they wish them to be.
“Mirroring” as he coaches it (at least from what I can tell reading the blog) amounts to a way to express femininity and let men lead while being a hedge against players i.e. to see if men are investing in her or just looking for pump and dumps — don’t call/text unless he does for example.
Han, It’s a strawman but I’ll play
“Hypergamy + Hamster = Equal Mate”
An in men
“blue balls + the one = Soul Mate”
* * *
But the quote says everyone (man and women) have the same goal.
Saying that “women + hamster = maybe I’ll marry Clooney” proves men and women dont have the same goal because that’s not how men operate.
Yeah, I don’t agree with her words that women want an equal.
#354;
It’s not the familiarity; it’s about who has the power in the relationship. If you don’t exercise dominance in the marital relationship, it leaves a power void.
There is indeed a power issue in this dynamic. That is why one must confront the emotional issue, at the time and place of one’s choosing, rather than avoid and withdraw, only to be ambushed shortly afterwards. By doing so, you take the initiative, and hence demonstrate power. By avoiding or withdrawing from conflict, you lose power.
I have found that the confrontation rarely involves the degree of conflict I expected it too. In fact, my wife is so pleased and relieved that I’m engaging her on her issue that she tries extra hard to be nice. Avoidance is what generates the real conflict. The wife is getting more frustrated while simultaneously losing respect and gaining hand, which is a toxic combination.
“Hypergamy + Hamster = Equal Mate”
My version is
“Hypergamy + Vaginal price bonus = Equal Mate”
As long as men want pussy more than women want dick, and as long as men want children, women will command a SMV premium, aka hypergamy.
Why didn’t I chase after Darth Vader in his TIE fighter and blast him instead of just letting him get away?
Because there had to be a sequel.
#365 yes, indubitably. But the solution is not men wanting less, the solution is women wanting more.
“Well, I did become a general in the Rebellion.”
Right, I’m sure the Princess had nothing to do with that cherry assignment. From smuggler to C-level gig? And she let you keep your POS (“she may not look like much”) ship and best friend riding shotgun. That is “mating success”.
Fast forward: “Do you HAVE to park that THING out front?” “Your damn walking-carpet just got into the liquor cabinet again!” “Why doesn’t he get a place of his own already?”
@Taz
It will be interesting to see in the new movies, 30 years later, the married dynamic between Han and Leia. Will she be a nagging shrew? Will he have been tamed into a hen-pecked provider?
#339 “all my partners” doesn’t sound very beta. (beta oneupmanship is almost as entertaining as nerd oneupmanship): “That’s nothing! My wife not only made me go back into Walmart to exchange the regular maxipads for the XXL-UltraMegaPads, while she sat on a towel, I had to carry her purse to dig through it at the register for the receipt.”
#369 I had always wanted to believe that women’s bitchiness towards me was because they were all like Leia and secretly liked me. I was told this repeatedly by women, only by women, and I really wanted to believed the women, instead of believing all the old men who were telling methe truth.
Re: social circle. I’ve always had a huge social circle, which when I was available merely increased the pool of rejections. Although the few women I was ever serious about were directly from my social circle, since sort of trying game I’m much more successful in getting women from outside my circle to act right.
#337 “Stephanie’s response about that didn’t clarify much.”
I hope she doesn’t just hit and run, and interacts some.
So, where are we now in this thread? Everyone who is not a player is buying his wife’s tampons while carrying her purse?
@369
Leah leaves Han Solo for Lando Calrissian because she says that the name “Solo” doesn’t include her. She got the Millennium Falcon and custody of Chewbacca in divorce proceedings. She crashed the Falcon a week later. Han is still making payments on it.
I read about it in his memoirs “Cabonite Wasn’t So Bad”.
“Everyone who is not a player is buying his wife’s tampons while carrying her purse?””
And winning.
All married men are losers? Just trying to keep up.
Her (yelling): While you’re getting my tampons, don’t forget that I need some Spring Rain, too. And get some extra bags. And don’t take too long. See if there’s a sale on bras and panties while you’re at it. Luv ya!
Her (to bystanders): My husband is such a dear. I just love him to death–I’m so lucky.
[Husband, with pathetic frown on his face, hunched over, trudges into the Walmart.]
#374 “Everyone who is not a player is buying his wife’s tampons while carrying her purse?” Only the best of us.
#377 “All married men are losers?”
The vast majority of married men are treated constantly as losers by their wives, yes.
#378 For all the women I’ve known the ratio, which is, for varied reasons, many more women than just my wives, sisters,and other relatives, the ratio of panties to bras far exceeds 10:1. My wife currently has two bras in normal rotation, Ithink, but undoubtedly over 100 panties. Four large drawers in her dresser are stuffed, not to mention more than that in piles of laundry.
#280 “the mild mannered engineers I know aren’t having trouble keeping theirs”
In general, our wives crow to the outside world about how Lucky they are to have Such a wonderful hubby, but in inside reality they are shrews to their husbands. So, best of both world for those wives, so no wonder the women stay.
#370 #339 “all my partners” doesn’t sound very beta.
All eight of my partners. More beta?
Married beta theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ROGOHNSEBs
The “vast majority,” OK.
And we know this … how?
It’s far more likely that we (here) have mistaken a trend–more men are treated worse by their wives than in the past–for a universality. Since the trend is hotly denied by the ambient culture,* which has an interest in covering it up, it’s only natural the push-back against the denial can get rather heated. That’s not a valid excuse, though, for bad logic and unsustainable generalizations. Nothing against generalizations; they can be very useful tools but only if and to the extent that they are true.
Just as, whenever it’s pointed out that the UMC has the lowest divorce rate (around 15%) of any demographic cohort, the immediate assertion is always “Yeah but those marriages are sexless, loveless economic arrangements.” And we know that … how? Sure, some of them are—and probably more than in prior years. But all contrary evidence is waved away with this un-falsifiable assertion. Since no outsider can ever know what’s really going on inside a marriage, we may as well just assume that they are all sexless and awful. Because Red Pill, etc.
But really, because “probity,” the insistence on believing only the worst because it is the worst. All higher things must be illusory. This stems, in the final analysis, from a combination of vanity and fear: the vanity that arises from the pose “I alone live without illusions and the rest of you are suckers and hence beneath me”; and the fear of being taken for a sucker, of deception, of the worst kind of deception, self-deception. It’s not unlike the man who refuses to ever love because he “knows” that love is phony, but deep down is merely afraid of being dumped.
So Ciaran’s belief in the strength and value of his own marriage (and in marriage in principle, if not necessarily in every marriage or even in marriage as culturally practiced today) must be false, a self-deception. It’s a rationalization of his own weakness (because only players and “alphas” have any value or are “real men”). To the extent that he believes he is happy, he is suffering from “false consciousness” (it’s amazing how a generally rightist line of argument inevitably circles back not merely to a well-worn leftist chestnut, but even to one of the key pillars of feminism). Or, perhaps the simplest explanation of all, he is just lying. He’s miserable and he knows it, but since he lacks the fortitude to get out and go be a player, for his own psychological benefit, he needs to go convince anonymous strangers that he is really happy after all.
* And of course even this is not so simple, for the culture speaks with both sides of its mouth on this issue. It denies the trend when men complain about it, but celebrates it in story-telling about savvy, sarcastic wives who constantly humiliate their buffoon husbands.
Some good responses to my question. I have my own thoughts but it’s good to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Without starting another huge to-do, I’m still of the mind that marriage is a necessity if you want kids, but not so much if not.
Escoffier,
I remember you talking about marriages that you knew were the wife had contempt for the hubby, what % are these?
“Since the trend is hotly denied by the ambient culture,* which has an interest in covering it up”
Where is it being covered up? isnt it mainstream that husbands suck, wifes rock, and single or divorcee women exploring life rock even more?
Ciaran is literally ‘bound’ not only to put a positive spin on Beta Game, but is also ego-invested in ignoring anything critical of it:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/09/02/beta-game/
#346
Good article, not much more to add to that. The common consensus in society is that a single man should just be happy to stick it in whichever vagina he can find.
I remember you talking about marriages that you knew were the wife had contempt for the hubby, what % are these?
In my UMC world? Less than 5% show it openly. Perhaps another 5% leave hints but it’s ambiguous. Then well over 50%–probably closer to 80%–show a happy face in public. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors, but if it’s so obvious that the “vast majority” of women are awful wives who treat their husbands horribly, the signs ought to be vastly more numerous. I was at a large event Monday night, well over 1,000 people, most of them couples, and I saw not one sign of wifely contempt, even though most everyone was drinking (safe to assume that booze loosens tongues).
Where is it being covered up? isnt it mainstream that husbands suck, wifes rock, and single or divorcee women exploring life rock even more?
As I said, it’s mainstream in the story telling. But on the other hand, when men complain, they get shouted down. It’s flat contradiction whose only purpose is to enforce Rollo’s “female imperative.” “We are allowed to say we’re awesome and you suck, but if you complain that we say it, we’ll deny ever having said it and accuse you of whining.” That’s more or less the cultural script right now. The justifiable frustration against the inherent contradiction and unfairness leads, I believe, to overstatements such as “the vast majority of married men are treated constantly as losers by their wives.” I’m not even sure that’s true of TV wives, though the meme is common enough (and I hardly watch anything anymore anyway). However, it takes only one big hit like “Everybody Loves Raymond"—the ne plus ultra of the genre—to do tremendous cultural damage.
@YOHAMI, theasdgamer, and jf12
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
Ok, I will clarify this the best I can. I was being kind. I said equal to our own best selves. Most people do not represent the best versions of themselves every day. A women can be a 9 in looks, but most of the time she puts in the effort of a 7. Will she find a guy who is a 9 in looks? Probably not, but she will try to find the best partner of her best self. Chances are she will settle for the equal of her average self.
#388,
Ciaran is literally ‘bound’ not only to put a positive spin on Beta Game, but is also ego-invested in ignoring anything critical of it:
It appears to me that my critics are the ones who are more ego invested, as they are the ones trying to discredit my claims while having no evidence of their truth or falsehood. I, on the other hand, am relating personal experience; it would be impossible not to have some ego-investment. Contrary to your statement, I have not been ignoring the criticism, but have been actively responding to it, and even agreeing with some.
Escoffier’s comment at #385 is very much to the point. People who construct schema to understand become ego-invested in their world view. But all schema fail, because none is adequate to describe the complexity of the real world. Confronted with evidence of exceptions to their schema, those who are ego-invested reject the evidence and discredit the presenter.
Escoffier said “it’s amazing how a generally rightist line of argument inevitably circles back not merely to a well-worn leftist chestnut”. This is because all schema and all schematic thinking suffers the same weakness, whether it be on the left or the right.
Escoffier,
“As I said, it’s mainstream in the story telling. But on the other hand, when men complain, they get shouted down. […] We [women] are allowed to say we’re awesome and you suck, but if you complain that we say it, we’ll deny ever having said it and accuse you of whining.”
Its not a contradiction. If a man “celebrates” that women rock and men suck he gets celebrated for it (doesnt get pussy). If a man complains he’s pointing the finger at women, so he gets corrected, because you shoudnt touch a woman with your dirty fingers.
Women dont ever deny saying that men suck, In my experience.
#351
I have no „need to disbelieve him”. He said this beta strategy is a worse option now than it was decades ago, and I’m sure we all agree that the lower sexual status a man has, the worse that option is for him. Marriage 2.0 has risks that are simply horrendous, and its rewards are rather questionable and ultimately conditional on the wife’s whim. This has also been discussed numerous times in the sphere. That’s what I’m keeping in mind. Signing up for marriage 2.0 is the surest way to ruin your life if you’re an average man. Literally any other path you choose in life, not counting suicide, is bound to bring less misery and more satisfaction. Marriage 2.0 is too risky and miserable if you aren’t at least a higher beta, and it pretty much makes no sense if you’re an alpha because you can get all its potential benefits in life without marrying. This has also been discussed many times. Well, where does that leave us? This isn’t a pessimistic narrative, this is a sane narrative.
I have no useful advice to give to men who already signed up it. The fact is, nobody else has either. All everybody can say is „try not to fuck it up”, „keep your wife attracted”, „maintain your frame”, „learn Game” and so on. All this, of course, is based in the unspoken yet true assumption that no matter how bad it gets, he cannot just bail, because then it becomes much worse for him. He’s stuck, without useful options. All he can do is make the best of the situation he got himself into.
If a beta really wants to reproduce, if he’s willing to make all necessary sacrifices and subordinate everything in his life to that purpose, I suggest he expatriate and marry a non-Western woman untainted by feminism. If he isn’t willing to do that, I suggest he avoid fatherhood. Because he’s bound to end up miserable if he doesn’t.
Stephanie, #391
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
But are you talking “all” in the name of women, or both men and women?
“A women can be a 9 in looks, but most of the time she puts in the effort of a 7. Will she find a guy who is a 9 in looks? Probably not, but she will try to find the best partner of her best self. Chances are she will settle for the equal of her average self”
Since you’re talking about looks, is this about casual hook ups or something else? what do you mean with “find a guy”? a guy that will fuck her, or a guy that will fuck her and marry her?
“But are you talking “all” in the name of women, or both men and women?”
Both, people tend to inflate their own value while deflating others value. I say both genders seek to find the person equal to their self inflated value. More like haggling over price.
Stephanie,
“Both”
The your premise is not true.
“people tend to inflate their own value while deflating others value.”
Men tend to deflate their own value while inflating women’s value, so again not true. Higher value men are the exception, but then higher value men are still not looking for their “equal”
“I say both genders seek to find the person equal to their self inflated value. More like haggling over price.”
Probably that describes lesbian courtship. What a hell.
*Then your premise is not true.
Women dont ever deny saying that men suck, In my experience.
I have sometimes mentioned to a woman (or women) that it’s striking how the cultural depiction of men and women has radically changed, so that today it’s mainstream always to depict women as saints with superpowers and men as creepy losers or malevolent predators. Most have denied it, just flat denied that this is today’s cultural script. Some will, as you say, skip the denial (though not necessarily affirm, either) and go straight to “Only bitter losers complain about women.” Only a few have said, “Yes, I notice that too, and it’s terrible,” and they would all be classified here as dreaded “trad-cons.” I’ve yet to hear a woman say “Yes, it’s true the culture is like that, but only because we do in fact rock and you do in fact suck.”
#385
Mainstream culture gives the impression that marriage 2.0 is some sort of bonanza for men. Do you remember that female commenter here who called herself Jen? She repeated it like a parrot. Husbands are just lazy, sleazy, entitled dipshits, unaware of how lucky they are that some fantastic woman graciously agreed to marry them. That bastard’d otherwise probably be lying dead in the gutter right now after drinking himself to death and blowing all his money on porn DVDs. Now he just sits on ass watching TV whenever he can, ignoring his children and heartlessly using his wife for sex and housework, probably closing his eyes and fancying some blond porn slut he saw on the Internet whenever he cums all over her face. The poor creature, of course, bravely puts up with all that because she’s thinking of the children and is afraid of the social and financial consequences of filing for divorce. It’s a man paradise, I tell you!
By the way, Escoffier, aren’t you contradicting your earlier comments?
http://www.justfourguys.com/the-han-solo-seduction-leia-falls-in-love/#comment-14119
http://www.justfourguys.com/the-han-solo-seduction-leia-falls-in-love/#comment-14121
@YOHAMI
“Men tend to deflate their own value while inflating women’s value, so again not true. Higher value men are the exception, but then higher value men are still not looking for their “equal”
Maybe initially, but if you inflate a woman’s value based on her looks, then you find out she has a shitty personality- there is no making up for that deficit. She will continue to think she is a 9 based on the initial price inflation when the crappy personality deflates her overall value.
Escoffier,
” that it’s striking ”
That’s you passing judgement, and an emotional association, so women feel asked to sympathize with you on it, which would be an attack to mainstream culture feminism.
I tried many ways and ultimately this works for me every time:
I state that the current culture screams “women rock, men suck” everywhere, not as a lament but as a fact. If I get a strange look I go over a few easy cases of “men suck, women rock” and get everyone agreeing. The list is easy
Successful men? douchebags. Loser men? just losers. While successful women? proud! loser women? love them!
Then I say the whole thing is bullshit, and only then I may get the usual denial shaming koolaid, but most of the time I dont.
Mainstream culture gives the impression that marriage 2.0 is some sort of bonanza for men.
No way. Is there one man alive who ever saw Everybody Loves Raymond and wanted to be Ray OR his brother?
I’m out of touch with TV, but I recall from some years back a raft of shows that all had a similar preface: slobby guy with beer gut married to impossibly hot wife, way out of his league. Now, you could try to stretch that to make your point. At least these fat men had hot wives, so maybe marriage is not that bad! But if you actually watched the show, they were all treated like hell. And even then, not all the men were slobs who had gotten a great deal. There was one called (not making this up) “Yes, Dear” in which the husband was at least thin but also a dufus pushed around by his wife.
The shows I remember with some specificity from the ’80s were not like this. Cosby and Family Ties both featured Strong Independent Women(Wives) who were sassy to their husbands, but who also clearly loved them and (it was implied) were still attracted to them. The theme of those shows was the “equal partnership of two-career couples,” not “Woman great, husband loser” which became the trend in the ’90s and beyond.
RE: “striking,” I have learned that you can’t make any kind of comparison without someone hearing it as “passing judgment.” And of course the actual passing of judgment is absolutely verboten–unless the right judgment is being passed against the right(wrong) people.
Regardless, it’s just a fact that the depiction of men and women in the culture changed radically over the last few decades. There’s a whole genre of feminist literature that cheerled for this, and then once it happened documented and celebrated it. But if man simply states the same fact that the feminists teach courses about, he’s “judging” and so it’s bad. The point seems to be, we (men) are supposed to imbibe the change and let it form our weltanschauung, but we’re not supposed to consciously notice that it has happened, because conscious noticing might produce a rebellion or even opting out. That’s really the principle behind all propaganda.
HH, I don’t think there’s a contradiction. As with all generalities, there’s a spectrum, or a bell curve. In this case, the extreme left of the curve is “All women are angels”; the extreme right is “All women are sluts (or awful in some other way).” Obviously, neither of those absolutes is true. The question is, where is the curve the fattest? In the absolute middle, or closer to one of the ends, and if so, which one?
That blow job thread that deti linked shifted my thinking rightward, not all the way to the right.
One more point re: ELR. A constant theme of that show was how much sex he wanted and how little she wanted and how she used it like a dog trainer uses biscuits to get him to do her bidding. Maybe that celebrates marriage from a woman’s perspective, but certainly not from a man’s.
#404
But that’s the point. Woman great, husband loser. Slobby guy, hot wife. Or sassy, strong, independent wife. He’s lucky to have her. He’s such a slob he couldn’t have sex to save his life if he hadn’t married. It’s the best decision he ever made, whereas the woman made a huge sacrifice by saying yes to him because she’s a fantastic heroine with unlimited human potential. Now that loser has a comfortable life of getting sexed and taken care of. He doesn’t have to do the laundry for himself, do the dishes or cook his own meals. It’s a bonanza.
@Hollenhund & Escoffier
Esco, I will say this- I definitely respect your viewpoint, and I largely agree that the “modern marriage is hell” rhetoric is extreme, especially among the UMC. At the end of the day, if it was really that bad, the signs would literally be everywhere. That said, I do find it perverse when people try to quote statistics that supposedly dictate how much happier I would be because someone cooks my meals or makes sure I don’t get blue balls every day, as if that is the sum total of my life and happiness as a man, in some effort to convince me that I should enter into what is *supposed* to be a lifetime bond because “well, this is the way it’s always been done” and “it’s inevitable”. You get me? Seems like in these discussions of the merits, there is a tendency on the part of the pro-marriage folks (mostly women) to act as if we are being ridiculous to even question the value of the institution or consider any other path. It makes it look as if women are only interested in maintaining the status quo for their own benefit, and I would bet this causes some guys to wonder how deep a conspiracy exists around getting them to universally accept it.
Now, I don’t really think there’s a malicious conspiracy out there regarding marriage, but I do think it’s plainly obvious that women will use social means to protect their own ends at any cost, and we have to see past that to objectively form our own judgements on what is fitting in our own lives as men.
HH, I am speaking from a position of relative ignorance here, having not watched those shows all that much (unlike in the 80s, when I was pretty regular with the TV). However, my recollection is that–apart from the obvious and preposterous SMV imbalance, which would never happen in real life (sort of like baristas being able to afford two bedrooms and a terrace in the West Village)–those men did not have it good at all. They were treated horribly. I suppose the premise was “they deserved it,” but that’s just pandering to women, not a storyline intended to get men to sign on the dotted line. Those shows did NOT show marriage to be a boon for men, beyond the hot wife, who presumably they weren’t banging anyway, because their wives spent every second of screen time making clear how much they despised those slobs.
@ SS 391
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
You second answer wasn’t any more helpful than the first.
Ok, let’s try again. “Equal” implies some sort of comparison. What is being compared? Certainly, man =/= woman.
Assortative mating implies mating by attractiveness (let’s use SMV, just for kicks and grins), whether committed or uncommitted.
So, let’s assume assortative mating as the method of comparison. We’ve seen studies that indicate that women are hypergamous, which will end assortative mating for most women.
So, what then is to be the method of comparison? In what sense are the actors equal?
Escoffier, English isn’t my mother tongue, so I looked up “probity” in the dictionary and apparently it has a completely different definition than the one you gave. Care to explain?
@ Escoffier 404
No way. Is there one man alive who ever saw Everybody Loves Raymond and wanted to be Ray OR his brother?
You’re missing the point. Ray is the married Everyman. When his wife dumps on him, that gives permission to all wives to dump on their hubbies.
Anecdotal evidence from a forum about the frequency of married sex:
http://forums.menshealth.com/topic/63643898167189984
Jakes, I know that kind of statistical argument re: benefits of marriage is made all the time by tradcons (and feminists) and such, but two points.
1) Those things are true, society-wide. And for anyone who hasn’t yet given up on society (not sure where I stand here, lean pessimistic), then it’s logical to be concerned about broad trends. That should always stop short of individual harangues because each man needs to decide for himself what’s best for himself. A higher marriage rate is better for society, but only a fool tells THIS man to get married because of a statistic. Whoever gives advice to an individual man, first, ought to wait until asked, and second, ought to take individual circumstances into account. Focusing on broad policy, on the other hand, that increases social stability would be worthwhile (if it’s not too late to have any positive effect). In other words, I would never tell my brother to marry a harridan because statistics say marriage is good, but I would support a reform of no-fault divorce because I know that, broadly speaking, marriage is good.
2) I don’t think you’re really bumping up against a lot of that here in any case. We tend to waste time arguing about things we already broadly agree on. Or, we assume that any pushback against “probity” must mean that the pusher sides with the feminists. So, an overstatement is made against all marriage, someone objects, and all of the sudden the objector is a tradcon feminist telling men to subject themselves to marriage 2.0 No. I think it safe to take for granted that every regular commenter here understands what’s wrong with modern marriage.
#410
Yeah, but the obvious message is that those slob husbands would be in an even worse, in fact much worse, position if they didn’t marry.
You’re missing the point. Ray is the married Everyman. When his wife dumps on him, that gives permission to all wives to dump on their hubbies.
Maybe we are both missing the point. I think you said that modern pop culture shows marriage to be a boon to men. That is, it’s a false flag operation intended to entice men into a role in which they might otherwise be disinclined. It falsely shows them all these wonderful benefits.
Well, I don’t see it. The shows I am describing to, as you say, celebrate sassy women who undercut their husbands at every turn. But they in no way entice men to want to sign up for modern marriage. The men are treated like crap. Not subtly, but openly, loudly. That’s the appeal of the show—TO WOMEN. And, I suppose, to beaten down men who get grim laughs from recognition when they watch Ray.
What the show emphatically does NOT do is encourage single men to sign up. Nor does it cause married me to say “I’m sure glad I signed up for THAT!”
@theasdgamer
“Ok, let’s try again. “Equal” implies some sort of comparison. What is being compared? Certainly, man =/= woman.”
I think you are getting too caught up in a word choice.
“So, let’s assume assortative mating as the method of comparison. We’ve seen studies that indicate that women are hypergamous, which will end assortative mating for most women.”
I don’t believe most women are hypergamous. That leads to the belief of a fixed value which isn’t true.
@Esco 415:
Yeah, I get you, and I agree it’s good public policy in the aggregate. I was probably channeling our (maybe just my) experience at HUS, where it seemed arguing for an objective assessment of marriage including the risks, was deemed uncalled for. And yes, I appreciate the realism here from both the married and unmarried guys. It’s more balanced.
#391 “she will try to find the best partner of her best self.”
Ok, but that doesn’t two points that we are making here.
1. Most men aren’t like that. Most men aren’t looking for “best” anything; men are looking to be considered best by someone because they know that’s what women want.
2. Women’s vision of themselves at their best matches up with Prince Unicorn. So, she treats with contempt the average guy she is forced to settle for by reality.
Contempt by women of their nice normal husbands is the problem, not a symptom.
@Stephanie Shepard 418:
“I don’t believe most women are hypergamous.”
With all due respect, if you really believe this, you don’t know what it is to date women in 2014, especially the 20-something women at the peak of their self-perceived and society-perceived value. If they weren’t hypergamous, we wouldn’t be having any discussions about game, on blogs like these.
Great posts by Escoffier. FWIW, I think that we do need to remain vigilant against a sort of feedback loop in which we amuse ourselves while inexorably becoming more and more extremist in our views. I realize that half of the fun of participating on a forum is being able to put forward a more opinionated and funny caricature of your own real sociopolitical views, but still…
This is a well-studied problem within political parties—in the absence of a culture that is tolerant of diverse opinions, different backgrounds, and ambiguity, they can drift towards more and more radical positions and develop a “shout down the heretics” discussion style which gradually becomes incompatible with intellectual cosmopolitanism.
#394 “I have no useful advice to give to men who already signed up it. The fact is, nobody else has either.”
True that. All of MMSL, all of Dalrock’s advice, etc. can do is point in a direction and wish for a magical transport to get there. It is a miracle that sometimes bad wives cease being so bad, but it is a miracle. Most of the time. women have to be forced to cease being bad.
#418 “I don’t believe most women are hypergamous.”
Most women also wrongly don’t believe it. Which proves the point.
“Most women also wrongly don’t believe it. Which proves the point.”
Statistical evidence?
@ Han Solo
I imagine most nobility would have been greater betas.
Yeah, but the obvious message is that those slob husbands would be in an even worse, in fact much worse, position if they didn’t marry.
I don’t see it as obvious at all. Maybe that’s what the writers really believe (likely) but that’s not what is shown. What is shows are henpecked men with shrewish wives and unruly, ungrateful, contemptuous children. Typically, these men are “man’s men”, just want to watch sports, play golf, have a few beers, etc. (when not working, of course). Since they are already depicted as slobs whose wives are not attracted to them, how would they be worse off if single? They’d have more time to do what they want.
Now, of course, this being TV, typically the first 25 minutes shows her being awful and then it’s all tied up in the last five minutes and they are “happy.” I suppose some viewers will take the last five to be the whole and forget the other 25. But the balance of show depicts a man who would be better off single. Their intent, of course, is to convey the message that the WOMAN would be better off single and what a sacrifice she is making for this loser. But somehow they never actually show her DOING anything for him.
It’s not like June Cleaver, who is always shown doing things as a housewife and mother. It’s quite clear what Ward gets out of that marriage.
Stephanie,
“I don’t believe most women are hypergamous.”
What do you mean?
1) The top 20% attractive men is a myth and women feel attracted to most men, just like men are attracted to most women.
2) Women are attracted to the top 20% men, but because that 20% is their equal.
or maybe
3) Women are not looking for an elusive “real man plus checklists and bonuses”, but are actually looking for a next door joe and be done with it.
4) Women are looking for an elusive “real man plus checklists and bonuses” because that man is their equal, but they will settle for a less ideal man if left no other choice.
And please confirm if you believe any of this is also applies to men.
SS: “Both, people tend to inflate their own value while deflating others value.”
SS: Men and women seek parity and couple-up when they meet someone of equal attributes.
Actually, I’d say men — who otherwise exist in highly competitive hierarchies from age 5 onward — are extremely aware of their limitations. Second, men are expected (by themselves and by women) to bring superior qualities to an LTR.
In addition, marriage imposes burdens on men not accepted by women, even post-feminist women. For example, in the UMC marriage that enjoys an 85% success rate within a society in which marriage is collapsing, men are expected to grant their spouses a call option to retire to the home, work parttime, or work at less-remunerative activities that are more “personally fulfilling.” Therefore, the men understand that their role as provisioning provider to a woman and their brood is central to the relationship’s success. A man’s utility, less than his face, defines his value to most women.
Very, very few women accept their own feminist rhetoric in regard to gender-blind contributions to their relationships. That’s why women distinguish “men to date” from “men to marry.” The “men to marry” are rarely the hawt objects that are the “men to date.”
For this reason I would assert that the best woman for a guy to marry is one who is a point or two below him in looks. (Nature takes care of her usually being 10-50 points lower in IQ.) He already has to be of superior practical utility, to maintain her interest. The additional two disparities in attributes tend to constrain her hypergamous instincts.
This is another set of reasons why TFT is really a strategy to assist women in exploring a greater pool of better men. Relationship-minded men already understand the series of contributions, which are really trade-offs, that must be made to sustain a woman’s interest once she bats her eyes and says, “Thanks, I’d love a drink but only if I get the next one.”
I again commend the TFT outlook for women, because as a man I find it extremely unusual to meet a woman who rewards my investment in a relationship with a matching response. Women will do better, with better men, if they walk their own equalitarian talk. I’ve known one in the past 15 years. But I, like most men, know that relationship success depends on my doing more, providing more, subsuming more of my personal desires and needs. It’s simply a feminist myth that men and women play Prisoner’s Dilemma from equivalent starting points. It’s documented that women lose attraction to men of equivalent or diminished resources. So TFT benefits women if they understand that, and demonstrate an ability and willingness to offer men just a little more of what society falsely claims they already have.
Conversely, if a man plays Prisoner’s Dilemma under the assumption that we are all starting at the same starting line, and we share the same finish line, he’s about to have his head handed to him. Men start with a ten yard penalty, and finish — if ever — at a finish line 10 yards more distant.
Stephanie, it’s somewhat difficult to find solid studies that prove women are hypergamous, in the critical area of setting the floor too high for whom they would consider. But there are some studies that hint at it and combine it with most guys’ anecdotal experiences and you can draw the conclusion that many women are somewhat to highly hypergamous. I’m of the view that about 1/2 of women are noticeably hypergamous while the other 1/2 either controls it or just isn’t all that hypergamous at all.
Here’s a study that shows that women have more sex with the hotter guys while the number of sex partners mildly decreases the hotter the woman. Implying that some of the hottest men are getting sex with average looking women to make the numbers add up:
http://www.justfourguys.com/study-shows-women-fuck-hotter-men/
Here’s a speed-dating study that shows women are pickier than men:
http://www.justfourguys.com/women-are-more-picky/
Also, ask a lot of guys who have had sex with a lot of women and most of them will admit that a good portion of the women were attractive enough to bang but not date, but many/most of those fuck-only women wanted to have a relationship with the man. Meanwhile, these men have had or could have had relationships with the hotter women they had sex with. My guess is that these men rarely ever had sex with anyone that was out of their league like the less attractive women did.
Also, it makes sense that in a safe/rich environment that since women can be more choosy about the men they go for (don’t need the provider/protector that will stick around anymore) that many of them will do so and likely evolved to have this environmentally-induced tendency hardwired into them (meaning, in poor/dangerous environments they’ll be much more glad to take their percentile equal but not so in safe/rich).
In my own personal experience, about half the women I’ve had sex with were what I would classify as pretty enough or greater than my threshold to consider a relationship with (and I either did have one with them, considered it or they wanted it, or in a few cases the woman was only looking for casual) and the other half not. Nearly all of the lesser half wanted a relationship with me, which was never going to happen. They were being unrealistic in their expectations and ignoring men that do find them attractive enough to LTR. Of course, you can talk about my role in this as taking up the time of women I didn’t want to date but I didn’t make them grand promises or anything either, and as time moved on, I was more and more blunt about only wanting sex with them.
Another high-N guy (though we have different styles of how we find women), Jason773, basically confirmed my same experience of the rough break down of how many were hot enough and how many weren’t.
And since most/many of the hot-enough women either did date us or were willing to, along with having sex with us, then you can’t say we were going for someone out of our league.
SS: “I don’t believe most women are hypergamous.”
A priori, if your reasoning commences here, because you’re defying evo-psych science and documented social conditions, there’s little point to this discussion. It’s too tiring to contemplate a rehash of this subject. Best wishes, but please don’t advise any male you care about to ignore the mechanics of mating, marriage and divorce.
A correction to the above.
Actually, the wife in ELR is shown doing housework all the time. But, then, she is a SAHM and he works full time. Yet she is constantly complaining that he does not do “enough.” Apparently, earning enough on one salary to support five people is not “enough.” Also, she has her in-laws living literally across the street. Now, admittedly, her MiL is a PitA. But not unhelpful, just officious and often cutting. Still, most modern mothers today would KILL to have grandparents living on the same block. A godsend! It’s hard to imagine what makes Debra so put upon that she can’t run the house herself, with her in-laws across the street to pitch in.
Yes, the show always takes her side. But if you are a man watching, all the conditioning the world is not enough to prevent you from seeing that Raymond’s life is not desirable. It is in no way a celebration of marriage from the man’s point of view.
@426 Nem
Yeah, as Escoffier talked about in his Plato/alpha post, often the descendants of the great men who conquered weren’t so alpha or great themselves but with some exceptions weren’t total buffoons.
jf12’s saying that it would be preferable to be born alpha, though true in many ways, is mostly just wishful thinking, similar to wishing one had been born rich, or more whatever, and makes me think of Jon Snow saying he always wanted to be a ranger and Sam replying, “I always wanted to be a wizard.”
Stephanie Shepard:
First let me start by saying you get props from me for writing a guest post for us. Also, you get props for putting your views out there for us to respond to. We’ve bluntly and directly criticized your post here, and you’ve been a decent sport about it. I don’t agree with TFT and stated the reasons why, and we can agree to disagree.
That said, I want to understand what you meant by this:
“The truth is that we all want to find the best partner equal to our own best selves.”
Then you clarified it:
“Ok, I will clarify this the best I can. I was being kind. I said equal to our own best selves. Most people do not represent the best versions of themselves every day. A women can be a 9 in looks, but most of the time she puts in the effort of a 7. Will she find a guy who is a 9 in looks? Probably not, but she will try to find the best partner of her best self. Chances are she will settle for the equal of her average self.”
Then you said in response to Yohami, who I think is trying to understand it as I am:
“people tend to inflate their own value while deflating others value. I say both genders seek to find the person equal to their self inflated value. More like haggling over price.”
and
“Maybe initially, but if you inflate a woman’s value based on her looks, then you find out she has a shitty personality- there is no making up for that deficit. She will continue to think she is a 9 based on the initial price inflation when the crappy personality deflates her overall value.”
Then you had this exchange with asdgamer:
SS: “I think you are getting too caught up in a word choice.”
ASD: “So, let’s assume assortative mating as the method of comparison. We’ve seen studies that indicate that women are hypergamous, which will end assortative mating for most women.”
SS: “I don’t believe most women are hypergamous. That leads to the belief of a fixed value which isn’t true.”
And at the end there, I can see where you’re getting lost in the weeds.
Let me make the following observations:
1. You’re proceeding from an incorrect premise that most women are NOT hypergamous. I’m certain you’re wrong about that. My bluest of the blue-pill parents told me about women wanting to “marry up” when I was a young kid; and they knew next to nothing about the true nature of male-female relationships.
Women are hard-wired to seek out the best man (men) they can find. Frankly, women don’t’ have a choice in the matter. Hypergamy is a fixed star in the intersexual relationship constellation; and no amount of wishing that it weren’t so will change that.
By the way, I saw at 425 you demanded statistical evidence for most women not believing they themselves are hypergamous.
Two can play that game. Please produce scientific evidence supporting the proposition that most women are not hypergamous.
Or as one other woman once famously put it, “Provide stats for this or shut up.”
2. A woman tries to find the best partner she can irrespective of her own value. All women want male 10s; all want George Clooney and Brad Pitt. The female 2 who has no chance with a male 10 still wants him. She’ll settle for a male 4, though. The female 9 has a shot at locking down a male 10 but will settle for a 9.
3. A man takes what he can get. A male 10 sleeps with women from about HB6 (slumming it) to HB 9s and 10s (keepers until they get to be a hassle). A male 6 wants a HB 10 but knows he can never get one so he settles for a female 4 or 5.
4. Women overestimate their own values. That leads to bitter disappointment because they can get the men they want, only for sex.
5. Some (not all, some) men underestimate their values.
6. It might be that people want equal to their “self-inflated values” but it almost never works out that way. Most women get a man who is above them in SMV. Most men get a woman below them in SMV. Both “settle”, as it were.
Your conclusion that most women are not hypergamous is where you’re getting tripped up.
It would be interesting to hear the looks distributions (in terms of relationships/marriage ladder vs. sex ladder) of guys here, especially the higher-N guys.
Also, I remember the commenter Zach basically saying the same thing where some of the women he had sex with (due to beer goggles or whatever) were not up to snuff for more than a bang.
Of course, a man with tons of options would never need to bang lower than relationship-quality looks but such men are rare. Likewise, a man could choose to only have sex (in or out of an LTR) with women that met his LTR looks threshold, and thus, usually, have less total sex partners.
I would guesstimate that the number of women that the typical man beds in casual sex below his LTR looks threshold outnumbers the number of women that are out of his league by about a 20:1 ratio or more. And if they’re having an LTR then you can’t say she’s out of his league. Also, it’s important to remember that men’s and women’s sexual value and relationship value are not based exactly on the same weighting of factors. Women’s SMV and MMV are based much more on looks whereas the man’s are based more on confidence, charisma, status, though looks still play a role.
HH,
By “probity” I mean not the dictionary definition but a philosophical concept that emerged in the late 19th century out of Nietzsche’s writings and developed, and later critiqued, by his successors. Redlichkeit is the word being translated.
Hypergamy isnt real everybody. Women really care about who you are as a person and they want to find their equal. The thing is all of them believe they are Britney Spears.
@ Ciaran 303
But that’s a selection bias, don’t you see? Of course all the sluts are going to be out dancing!
These were all UMC women in modest apparel. One was with her hubby and one usually takes her hubby when she goes dancing. They didn’t dress like sluts and you remember the saying about ducks. They aren’t on their cells much, so they are likely not using Tinder when dancing.
Your point about wives making themselves approachable is important. When they do that, they aren’t mate-guarding themselves, unlike when they are meeting with the women’s book club.
@Han Solo, Stephanie:
Han, her reply to jf12 might have meant that she was asking for proof of jf12’s assertion that most women don’t know they’re hypergamous. I think that’s a fair question- many women DO know that they prefer to punch above their weight. But the question as to whether they know this or not is pretty irrelevant, the real question is whether they have a tendency to do so or not.
The fact that a minority of men command the attraction of a much greater base of women speaks to this, so does Han’s article and studies that point to the pickiness of women. I think those are a very direct statistical measure of what we’re talking about. And there are at least a few of us here who have slept with a fair few girls who we definitely knew were punching above their weight, and know that the easier pull is a girl who’s convinced you are a couple notches above her. The facts on the ground really do speak for themselves.
Scoff: #432: pop culture view of husbands and men.
I like Americana (roots country music) and last year there was a TV show created by Khalli Couri (married to Americana genius T-Bone Burnett) about the process and lifestyle of both roots country and NashVegas country. It’s called Nashville.
The show barely hung on to get a second season, and transformed itself in search of more eyeballs. T-Bone quit, claiming it had gone from a study of music and its denizens, to a soap opera. Still, I sat down this weekend with great anticipation to binge-watch a few episodes.
T-Bone was right. After a few episodes, there were a few consistent changes in narrative structure.
a. All NashVegas all the time. The series protagonists are a group of women and men who rotate in and out of each others lives. Only now the drama is not the music (which is now countrypolitan 90% of the time), but the extraordinary bravery and sensitivity of all the female characters, who tend to fuck now and ask questions later, prior to breaking down like delicate flowers owing to the perfidy of men and the noble pain that is artistry. The women are artists, headliners, poets, sensitive, entrepreneurs, forgiving saints, troubled geniuses, patient adults. They’re always crying, yelling, or being abused by somebody.
b. The men are: drunks, drug addicts, exploitive (of young girls) manipulators, criminals, self-sabotagers, jealous and vindictive adolescents, closet homosexuals playing macho cowboys, murderers, suicides, and sexual predators. Yes, these are the male ‘heroes’ of the series.
c. The three men who have more good than bad qualities are: a) a blockbuster hitmaker star who Mans Up and realizes he just wants to marry Connie Britton, who looks 60 and dresses like Mylie Cyrus; a gay guy who is victimized by Nashville homophobia; a beta boy with feminine features who’s about 5’4″ and has tireless, endless devotion to Hayden Panettiere (who manages to combine Hilary Clinton’s and Mylie Cyruses worst qualities); another beta boy songwriter who’s good at holding hands when he’s not churning out hits for more talented women.
The show just rotates these characters, now, in and out of precipitous hookups and failed “relationships”. Over each 40 minute episode we are treated to half-a-dozen women screaming and crying at different points as they reach for their stars. While the men abuse, manipulate, exploit, and fail them.
Watched back-to-back, it became extremely anxiety-producing. One is supposed to admire the screaming, crying, hooking-up women who make the world go round, and one must tolerate a parade of douchebag adolescent boys with money and pecs, who just need to do a better job of satisfying their frustrated women friends.
Hypergamy denialism:
a. OKC data lie. Women and men evaluate the appearance of the opposite sex on symmetrical bell curves. The OKC data, again, that shows women find 80% of the men “below average” in looks, should be discarded.
b. Women across the board marry men offering the same level of provisioning support, or an equal distribution of lesser and greater.
d. Historically women marry men the same age, or an equal distribution of older or younger.
e. Women do not prefer to date men much, much taller than them.
f. Women do not write match.com profiles that specify an income range for a man higher than their own.
g. Women are cool with stay-at-home dads, and have sex with them as much or as more than women who are provided for by their husbands.
h. Women do not initiate divorce at a rate 2x higher than men.
i. George Clooney is of the same age, income and social status as his wife.
j. There’s no such thing as beta bucks. Women never change lanes and seek a soft landing with a protective, providing spouse of significantly greater resources than the James Dean clones they’ve been banging.
BV, I’ve not watched the show, but perhaps it’s just a country version of Mad Men? Which often seems to have no plot whatsoever. The point of that show seems to be threefold:
1) Showing ways that we today can feel smug about our superiority to the pre-’60s trogs who preceeded us. Look, they litter! Bert Cooper doesn’t want a black receptionist! Peggy had to go and have her illegitimate baby in secret!
2) Costuming, furniture, and production values generally.
3) Secret envy of the fact that they smoke, drank and had fun. This is the extra special appeal to women. “Good” men (betas) such as Cosgrove Harry are pathetic. But sexist cheating boozers–hawt! I think it was Weiner himself who said “What’s sexist at the office is fuel in the bedroom.”
Sounds like Nashville is giving the lady viewers what they want: heaping piles of bad boy.
Scoff, in contrast, to clear my head, I caught up on Mad Men right after the Nashville debacle.
Really, there’s no contrast. Mad Men contains adults, and even a bad boy like Roger is a respect-inducing figure. The narrative structure of Mad Men, further, is so superior as to seem from a different medium. I rewatched the most recent episode twice and the foreshadowing and subtlety (of adults hinting at but not screaming out) their impulses is decades more mature.
Don, who remains a deeply flawed figure, is climbing out of his personal crisis that closed season 5. He evinces self-control, brilliance, and self-contained power. He’s taking control of himself for the first time, and retaking control of his career. He treats unpleasant men with deference, if required, even if he laughs at them. I would say his emerging maturity is one reason why the show is declining for the first time in popularity.
The least attractive person on the show is the bitter, angry Betty: a Stepford wife absent the robotic manners.
Agree on the historical verisimilitude of the sets and accessories. Draper, further, is admired by feminists today because he’s a successful provider with the physical qualities of an NFL athlete. He remains the bad boy in a suit, only now he’s clearly retaking the mountain that his failures in the last season cost him. His wife is off pursuing her dreams on the wrong side of the country, which he funds.
Nashville doesn’t celebrate the loser bad boys in any way. In essence, it’s an “all men are evil weakass jerks” show. It’s a stupid enough show in that the “good boys” sole function is as victims or emotional tampons. (Stupid because it doesn’t address the fact that the women keep hooking up with bad boys, which fact the show doesn’t confront.)
BuenaVista, #441
Explained by saying that women mistakenly self inflate their own natural base value of 8.5 by another +5 points.
Also note that men maliciously inflate their own natural value of 2.4 by another 3 points, but sadly this still means every man is shooting out of his league.
@Jakes
I could agree that most hypergamous women don’t know or think they are being so. They tend to think they’re 2-3 points higher in value than they are, often confusing their sexual value with their marriage value.
One case was a girl who was generously a 4 in looks and thought she had a chance with my roommate at the time who was easily a 7 in looks and likely an 8 in marriage value due to being successful and socially fluid.
@ YOHAMI 397
Men tend to deflate their own value while inflating women’s value, so again not true.
I don’t think that men inflate women’s value.
I found that I deflated my value because I put too much weight on my weakness in being able to participate in group convos. I thought I was lucky with my fling, my gf, and my wife. My fling was a 9 with a fiance; she was DTF based on me isolating her, walking holding hands, asking her to fuck, and passing two easy shit tests. Not much DHV with my fling other than my basic frame. My wife was an uncirculated dime. My gf wanted to make out with me ten minutes into our first date (ostensibly we were just studying together as platonic friends) and she had a bf off-campus. Attractive women keep hitting on me (a flood of IOI’s mostly) whenever I’m out, yet for some reason I keep thinking that women see me as low value. :/
“Tits or shut up” doesn’t work with my frame, unfortunately. Yeah, the commenter was throwing a feminist shit test at me. Mating is on her mind. I have enough ambushes to dodge from women in my social circle–don’t need any more excitement. For example, one was trying to get me to go on a float trip with her and a couple in our group. She isolated me once before but I fended her off despite her throwing a few hugs my way. heh
#425 In redpill language, the feminist imperative is what keeps you from acknowledging hypergamy. The short version is that men are MUCH more egalitarian in their mating choices. I know women know that, but for some reason (i.e. hypergamy) women are forced to try to delude themselves (the men aren’t deluded) that women are not picky. Maybe her delusion also helps her feel like she is special to her sweetheart, in addition to making her feel he is unspecial.
The best looking guys get far more women then the rest of men, whereas in contrast the women with the most men are average looking women. There are two classic online dating experiments I don’t feel like complying to look up and instead I ask you to look up, one showing that women thought 80% of men were below average, and the one in which the best looking guy got all the contacts and most of the guys got zero contacts. (Naturally the women complained merely that the most unattractive woman did not get as many contacts as the most attractive, and discounted the fact that most men get zero.)
And the statistics of Tinder swipes bears out that women erroneously rate themselves far too high, but good luck find those stats.
Did you ever see a growing boy standing next to his father doing a sort of salute off the top of his head up towards his father’s head, and crowing “I’m almost as tall as you!” even though he’s still two feet shorter? That’s how women are. Last year a 6’8″ new guy, age 31, started attending our church because his job moved him to Houston. Anyway naturally all the available women believed themselves to be uniquely matched to him, including the 4’8″ 20 year old.
Anyway if you need me to I’ll google hypergamy for you.
More hypergamy denialism:
k. Driving a Porsche will not get a man laid.
l. Slender women are totally cool, because body awareness, dating chubby guys of their own height, economic status, and education. Because it’s just the inner you that matters to them.
m. The reason why UMC women drop out of the corporate ratrace to stay home is sexism, not because they can defer their provisioning needs to a man.
n. Assortive mating of the UMC/professional class disproves hypergamy, because these UMC women impose the same material obligations on themselves as they do on their husbands.
o. Cameron Diaz never dated ARod, because she has her own money, status and has no need to date someone with more money, strength and status. She really prefers that carpenter who repaired her garage door last week.
p. The most successful (in terms of books sold: 300mm+) novelist in American history, Louis L’Amour, wrote stories about men and women interacting as peers, with equal responsibilities to provide, protect, and parent. Markets tell us nothing about human desire and incentives.
q. The most successful women’s literary market is not the romance novel, in which men are dashing handsome physically imposing figures who dominate their women.
r. 50 Shades (100mm copies) is about a mature, established woman who falls in love with a young, immature, vulnerable man. Or was it two peers who took a class in BDSM at Vassar and retired to their apartment to experiment? I forget.
s. James Bond is a pussy, and his popularity relates to his ability to evaluate women for “just who they are” while forgoing the patriarchal impulse to jump out of airplanes, kill people, and bed women half his age.
@BuenaVista,
I again commend the TFT outlook for women, because as a man I find it extremely unusual to meet a woman who rewards my investment in a relationship with a matching response. Women will do better, with better men, if they walk their own equalitarian talk. I’ve known one in the past 15 years.
I’m going to continue my role as outlier – this seems odd to me. My experience with an admittedly small number of women is that they were generally quite eager to please. Perhaps you are too ambitious in your dating aspirations, and are with women who are less than thrilled by you. Or maybe I was too modest in mine, and could have done better.
#434 “My bluest of the blue-pill parents told me about women wanting to “marry up” when I was a young kid”
The fact of hypergamy is never in serious dispute. Except in all women, whenever they want to justify their mating choices.
theadsgamer,
“Attractive women keep hitting on me (a flood of IOI’s mostly) whenever I’m out, yet for some reason I keep thinking that women see me as low value. :/”
lol man.
“Tits or shut up” doesn’t work with my frame, unfortunately”
I’d go with any of the 5 then, these were fine.
#449 Women “were generally quite eager to please” you, hence by definition you are an alpha, and quite rare because of it. Period.
jf12,
“women are forced to try to delude themselves (the men aren’t deluded) that women are not picky. ”
The problem is that “picky” has bad connotations, and thou shall not make bad connotations about a woman because she’ll bounce it outside, she’s not picky, it’s that…
“he is unspecial”
Like that.
Make it sound like it’s a virtue and they’ll embrace it openly.
The rule is that they embrace any virtue or quality and reject any criticism or bad stuff – regardless of if they have such virtues or bad connotations at all.
Instead of “woman are hypergamous” say “women naturally want real men who are good looking, confident & successful” and the tune changes. Then use the fact that only 20% of men fit those characteristics to bash all the other men and call them insecure and they give you tears of joy. Then say that this is the definition of “hypergamy” and they will be confused. Isnt hypergamy a bad word? no woman do THAT!
@jf12 452:
Or he really knows his ideal target audience. I know a few guys just like that. I do better with certain types of women than others, and I’m sure that many of us here will find the same if we’re around enough types of women to see the difference.
Ciaran, I tend to date professional women whom feminists would describe as apex females. They are all professional, slender, tall, and successful in their careers. They are 10-20 years younger than I.
Seeking parity in relationship investment is one of my four or five filters. If I meet one, again, who walks the parity talk, I’ll probably let the rest of the plates drop.
By parity I do not mean equal. I’m talking about someone who picks me up for a date, casually extends financial support for the relationship instead of deferring to my paying for most everything, does small kind things for me that only an intimate would know to do, grants me an emotional life with distinct emotional needs rather than making her emotional reality the basis of our interactions. Things like that. I consider it a shockingly low bar, considering its scarcity.
I practice a catch-and-release, and catch-again, dating model in which the women are on staggered, then reset, maturities. All of the women I date would marry me if I asked. I haven’t been dumped in five years, and I precipitated that by imposing demands on the girl instead of patronizing her solipsism. (Learned my lesson: never complain, never explain.) I am also a go-to guy, apparently, for past girlfriends who are now lane-changing and looking for retirement. I’m sure I know more about dating than a younger guy who’s locked down in what he believes is a solid marriage. (I have been there too, for 25 years actually, or so I thought.)
I’m merely referring to a social model that makes female emotional and material concerns primary, and the contradiction that condition offers given their proto-feminist lifestyle and careers. The woman I let go, and shouldn’t have, enjoyed my dominance in some activities, but never exploited me in prosaic ways. She married the next guy she met, and they’re quite happy, I believe.
BV,
A colleague lent me Mad Men Season 6. I watched it but have not watched Season 7 at all.
The whole show just seems to drift all the time. I guess the “arc” was Don’s spiral. But what the hell was different? He was always a cheater and a drunk. He’s on his second hot wife, whom he cheats on. Then suddently gets nostalgic out of the blue in a meeting, tells a innapropriate story and … kaboom! What precipitated that?
I mean, it held my interest to the extent that I watched the whole season but I still am not sure I could tell you why. Roger’s one-liners are good. What else?
#453 I enjoy matching well with the 1/10000 6’4″ handsome man who makes a comfortable living as a banker and enjoys lumberjacking, just like the 9998 out of 9999 other women. So why don’t all you other 9999/10000 men enjoy matching up with the 1/10000 women that match you in relative value, hmm?
#454 His N = 8 is not 6 larger than my N = 2, but his N = 7 women “eager to please” (Eager! Not just willing!) is a gajillion times larger than my N = 0. (Eager! I must ejaculate it more times today; Eager!)
Epic and hilarious takedown of “Nashville”. God, what a fucked up, disgraceful farce of a show.
Yohami: “Instead of “woman are hypergamous” say “women naturally want real men who are good looking, confident & successful” and the tune changes. Then use the fact that only 20% of men fit those characteristics to bash all the other men and call them insecure and they give you tears of joy. Then say that this is the definition of “hypergamy” and they will be confused. Isnt hypergamy a bad word? no woman do THAT!”
I think this is quite profound, and practically speaking, very useful. Thanks. I’ve really given up attempting to discuss intersexual dynamics with women, because I tend to get literal and use terms like “hypergamy”. Bad idea. But no woman will deny that it’s her birthright to be with a confident, intelligent leader with a sense of humor and good lats.
hence by definition you are an alpha
Not necessarily. Several possibilities, not exhaustive and not mutually exclusive and with much possible overlap:
1) He was alpha enough for her.
2) She’s on the low end of the hypergamy scale.
3) He sufficiently outranked her in terms of SMV, in those specific traits (not necessarily alpha dominance) that she cares most about.
4) A very good personality match of relative equals.
5) Genuine love.
For the simplistic “alpha by definition” explanation to be true, then:
A) Most men must be alphas
B) Most men must never have sex
c) Most men who do have sex must be being exploited by gold-diggers who don’t care for them.
A is mathematically impossible. B is known to be false, unless 80% of men who claim not to be virgins are lying, which means false self-reporting on a mass scale, less likely than an alien invasion. C is a backfill interpretation, once A and B are conceded to be false, but the initial claim must be held nonetheless, C provides a handy, un-falsifiable out.
Scoff, Mad Men doesn’t make sense unless you see it from the beginning. Don is a tragic, flawed man with irreconcilable contradictions, and you’ve miss the backstory that describes and defines his self-reinvention. This season seems to be saving Don. I always expected him to commit suicide, finally unable to manage the fabrication that is his new self. The opening credits were strangely ominous, until now when he seems to be constructing a conventional personal sovereignty. My best friend is a shrink who runs a hospital for sociopathic criminals, and he too saw Don — until this year — as a Greek tragic hero entrapped by his own efforts to escape a past too painful to confront.
I also take a professional interest in the writing (I worked in the theatre long ago, edited Sam Shepard, and had a play produced), which I think is the best I’ve ever seen on television.
But anyway, I agree that the show, if you look at it out of context of all 75 prior episodes, might seem trivial. (I don’t but I can see why you might think that.) I just think that that is like opening The Sun Also Rises on page 150: if that’s where you start, you’re going to wonder about all these people and their dreary superficial lives. YMMV.
#461 “alpha enough for her” is the sweet spot. It would be nice, except women make it difficult.
BV, I did see it from the beginning, but only once each, as they aired. I must have gotten bored with S5 because I didn’t watch 6 until about a month ago when someone lent me the DVDs.
I just have a hard time explaining to myself why I like the show. Unlike (say) The Wire, another SWPL darling, I know why I liked that.
BuenaVista,
Glad to be of any help.
@BuenaVista 455
Ciaran, I tend to date professional women whom feminists would describe as apex females. They are all professional, slender, tall, and successful in their careers. They are 10-20 years younger than I.
So I was right – you are ambitious in your dating aspirations. Whether you are too ambitious isn’t for me to say. But you are dating women that you have little leverage over in terms of SMV.
I haven’t been dumped in five years, and I precipitated that by imposing demands on the girl instead of patronizing her solipsism.
And that’s the price you pay for top shelf females, right? You cater to their whims, and they let you pay for stuff.
I’m talking about someone who picks me up for a date, casually extends financial support for the relationship instead of deferring to my paying for most everything, does small kind things for me that only an intimate would know to do, grants me an emotional life with distinct emotional needs rather than making her emotional reality the basis of our interactions.
The kinds of women who will give you these things exists IMO. The drawback is that they are not as hot as the ones you are dating. The SMV balance is against them, so they are willing to make it up in acts of kindness.
It sounds like the SMV balance is against you, so you are making it up in acts of kindness. If that’s what works for you, I’m not criticizing. I have a close friend who does the same. Compared to him, my girlfriends were a bit less hot, but treated me a lot better.
#466 ” treated me a lot better.”
The holy grail for men is ANY woman who will treat him marginally well. The Bible says such a woman is rarer than rubies, less than one in a thousand.
Ciaran, no, no, no, and no. I have the leverage in these relationships as I noted, by design. I could be dating 6’s and 7’s (hell, why not 3’s? I’ll just get more of the good stuff from them, according to your logic) which I guess is your suggestion. But what you’ll find is that in fact they are even more deferential, more submissive, more passive, more childlike. None of them will ever view me as someone of like agency or needs.
My point is that female preferences reserve emotional primacy for themselves, and provisioning primacy to men. It’s fine with me if you disagree, but as a self-described “beta provider”, I’m not sure why the fuck you’re offering tactical dating advice. I was a drafthorse greater beta for 25 years, also, so please don’t advise me on that activity.
Scoff, did you see True Detective? It too was extraordinary, in my view — until the last episode. Like Mad Men they wrapped up the first season with a discordant, illogical happy ending, which effectively destroyed the story in toto imo.
The Biblical phrase in question refers to a “virtuous woman,” not a woman who can treat a man marginally well. It’s a large question as to what “virtuous” means in that context but it is clearly something higher and rarer than a woman who will treat man marginally well.
It doesn’t say that such a woman is rarer than rubies, but that “her price is above rubies.” She could be more common but still be worth more, owing to other factors.
@jf12,
by definition you are an alpha
Is there such a thing as an alpha with a restricted sociosexual orientation? Then maybe. That would explain why the girlfriends treated me nice, as does my wife; they got an alpha for the price of a beta. Deal for them.
But I tend to these other explanations.
he really knows his ideal target audience.
He was alpha enough for her
I think I was good at picking girls who would treat me well. I preferred that over going for the hottest girl I could get and having to suffer her bitching.
#470 “It’s a large question as to what “virtuous” means in that context but it is clearly something higher and rarer than a woman who will treat man marginally well.”
Not to me.
No, I didn’t see that. In fact, I recall reading your posts about it, which remains the only thing I know about it.
#471 “Is there such a thing as an alpha with a restricted sociosexual orientation?”
If I answer a different question, the answer would be situational alpha, or contextual alpha. This is what women think they want: a man who is only an alpha sometimes, but a beta most of the time. In other words, beta main course with a side helping of alpha. In reality what women fervently desire and correctly respond to is a man who is extremely alpha most of the time, but occasional shows flashes of beta. In other words, alpha with a side of beta.
“I think I was good at picking girls who would treat me well.”
You picked the women who saw you as alpha enough. You’re not doing beta game, as you havent been doing here either, which I pointed already.
In beta drafthorse game all your value is what you provide. You provide comfort. And you receive some comfort back but never in equivalence with what you’re providing, and there’s no real gratitude because the woman always feels down to her core that you’re unworthy of her. Then the beta tries to placate this itch with even more comfort and hard work. That’s beta game. You overpay with resources and accommodating yourself to her because otherwise she would never be with you.
In contrast the woman is already pleasant when she’s with a man she likes. If he gives her a dorito bag is like he brought the moon, and she’s eager to accommodate to him just because. She works for it. And in the alpha version you wouldnt be with her if she didnt accommodate to you.
So I dont know the full extent of what you’ve been doing, maybe it’s just the traditional old school patriarchy thing, but mainstream beta its not.
So maybe Cioran is the mythical Beta with a side of Alpha, and aunt Susan just let him go?
*Ciaran
@BuenaVista,
I’m not sure why the fuck you’re offering tactical dating advice.
I’m not offering advice. I’m trying to figure out this: if you’re a dating master and I’m a beta provider, why are you complaining about the way women treat you and I’m not?
Here’s your list:
– picks me up for a date
– casually extends financial support for the relationship instead of deferring to my paying for most everything
– does small kind things for me that only an intimate would know to do
– grants me an emotional life with distinct emotional needs rather than making her emotional reality the basis of our interactions.
Your hypothesis appears that women don’t do these things because of their nature. “My point is that female preferences reserve emotional primacy for themselves, and provisioning primacy to men.”
I agree with that statement as a loose generalization, but not to the point that women will do none of those things ever. I’ve experienced all of them with multiple girlfriends. I’m attempting to resolve the disagreement between your hypothesis and my observations.
#436
Fair enough. I’m not an expert on Nietzsche so I won’t start an argument about this issue. But come on, can we honestly say that the statement that „the vast majority of married men are treated constantly as losers by their wives” is an example of the „insistence on believing only the worst because it is the worst” based on the notion that „all higher things must be illusory”? Really? What is the higher thing in this example? The „sanctity” of marriage 2.0? Objectively speaking, what is literally the worst one can believe about wives? That they are all sadistic whores just dying to get an abortion, murder their husbands and falsely accuse any man with rape and battery? One can read such opinions from time to time on manosphere blogs and forums. I think that comes pretty close. But is this the same as the simple observation that marriage 2.0 isn’t a good option in life for the majority of men? It isn’t even an attack on women per se.
Regarding “alpha enough for her,” there’s a (relatively) famous phrase in Livy which translates something like “And this is the nature of the multitude, either dominating proudly or serving humbly.” In Washington, this phenomenon is called “kiss up, kick down.” Naturally, kicking down—or abusing people simply because they are lower status—is always unattractive and contemptible. But there may be something salvageable here.
For any given man, in a population of X evenly distributed women, some will be so far out of his league that he can’t even bear to approach. Some will be close enough that he might try but he will fail. Others will give him a shot but he will ruin it by being too need, supplicating, and just mooing over his supposed good fortune.
Then on the other side of the room will be a cohort of women he can be at complete ease with. Some because he literally cares not one whit for them. Others because they are just enough beneath him that he is neither afraid of them nor grateful for their attention.
This is (yet another) reason why the binary “alpha/not alpha” paradigm is too simple. A man can be “alpha enough for her.” And how much is required depends on her.
I would venture that most men feel this in their bones. Who hasn’t had the experience, even on the same night, of feeling tongue-tied in front of a 9 but completely at ease with a 5?
All caveats apply, of course—fives today all think they are 8s and so on. The point is, it’s not “alpha or suicide,” as these threads so often make it sound.
#480 “Then on the other side of the room will be a cohort of women he can be at complete ease with.”
The women who seem most at ease with me have always been postmenopausal grandmothers, and prepubescent children, and relatives.
It’s not because of my preferences, but because of the women’s preferences.
@esc 480
Yes, the more critical factor is the relative values between the two people as opposed to being a universal alpha or beta. The male 7 may act like an alpha towards a female 5 and a beta towards a female 7 or 8.
#480 “Who hasn’t had the experience, even on the same night, of feeling tongue-tied in front of a 9 but completely at ease with a 5?”
Me (raises hand). You’re not taking seriously enough the extent of rejection of extraverted men too. My feelings have never been the problem.
#478 ” I’ve experienced all of them with multiple girlfriends. ”
Yohami’s superpowers are intense, aren’t they?
HH,
No one here disagrees about M2.0. That’s a settled issue (here).
It’s also entirely separable from whether “the vast majority of married men are treated constantly as losers by their wives.” (Notice I said “separable” not “separate.”) Because the current legal and social scaffolding around marriage is crumbly and awful, it does not necessarily follow that the vast majority of wives are bad. Certainly marriage 2.0 at worst incentives wives to be bad and at best does not encourage them to be good.
But we too often leap to generalizations that aren’t sustainable on the known facts. What is no doubt true, and what no doubt feminists and the culture generally do not want us to talk about it, is that the percentage of women who treat their husbands badly has risen a great deal in prior decades, and the culture either excuses them or eggs them on. That is a big enough problem as it is before we inflate it to AMALT (all marriages are like that.)
Once dug into that trench, then all married men who approach claiming that it’s not like that for them must be considered traitors or the enemy or deluded fools. That’s where probity kicks in. It’s the intellectual backfill or masturbation.
The higher things in this case are love, virtue, goodness (and more) all of which probity must consider illusory.
“Yohami’s superpowers are intense, aren’t they?”
That’s what she said.
@Han & Ciaran-
Han & Esco are right. A guy’s threshold is a big factor in the equation of how she sees him and how they interact. I know a short guy who used to kill it with most women because he was used to being around top tier girls due to his interests.
I don’t doubt that Ciaran has had these experiences. I’d venture a guess that since he was operating in his wheelhouse of social circle interactions, these girls saw him as a prize because he was so comfortable with them. Ciaran, it would be interesting to know what you’d rate some of those past girlfriends if you had to objectively compare your SMV to theirs. They might have been top tier but like it’s been said above, it’s more about who sees who as the prize.
@YOHAMI 475
You’re not doing beta game, as you havent been doing here either, which I pointed already.
Yohami, your critiques of my comments have been the most interesting thing here for me.
Ciaran, making observations is not “complaining.” Though it is very womanly of you to find it so, because I’d sure hate to be a “whiny bitter loser.”
“I agree with that statement as a loose generalization, but not to the point that women will do none of those things ever. I’ve experienced all of them with multiple girlfriends.”
This is a strawman attached to a couple of anecdotes. There’s the “you should just choose better women!” trope. There are women’s blogs where such forms of discussion are more highly valued.
I’m glad that you had a few successful dating experiences. Almost as glad as I am that I’ve matured out of the drafthorse beta lifestyle, which I rode about as far and successfully as a man can. I don’t think either of us has much to offer the other.
BV out.
@ Escoffier 480
Who hasn’t had the experience, even on the same night, of feeling tongue-tied in front of a 9 but completely at ease with a 5?
Me. I don’t recall ever feeling tongue-tied around a woman.
@BuenaVisa 489,
That’s a bit thick with the “shaming language”, isn’t it?
Perhaps the difference in experience is regional. Do you live someplace like NYC where women expect to be treated like princesses?
#491 “Almost as glad as I am that I’ve matured out of the drafthorse beta lifestyle, which I rode about as far and successfully as a man can.”
I wonder if me hauling my clattering wagon behind me is cramping my style? Shouldn’t women see it as some gnarlily masculine accessory instead?
@ Escoffier 480
For any given man, in a population of X evenly distributed women, some will be so far out of his league that he can’t even bear to approach.
Maybe for any given man SMV 8 or lower. I haven’t run into that situation.
This is (yet another) reason why the binary “alpha/not alpha” paradigm is too simple. A man can be “alpha enough for her.”
Some men are alpha enough for all women.
jf12: #478 ” I’ve experienced all of them with multiple girlfriends. ”
Yohami’s [Ciaran’s] superpowers are intense, aren’t they?
I’m keeping my big mouth shut on this one.
Couple of quick thoughts….
Regarding these “emotion tests”, “moodiness” as a test of commitment, my instinct is I have close to a zero tolerance policy for that shit. But I’ll say that I established that frame early with my wife. Early in our dating, she pulled one of those “emotion/test/moodiness” things, and I didn’t take her calls for the next 2 days, and let them all go to voicemail before I finally talked to her. She had to fear losing me in response to that behavior. And she did. Another time, she pulled a “dominance” move on me in a restaurant in front of a group of people. I was quietly enraged. I said we are leaving now. Got in the car, and stated unequivocally in a matter of fact voice “Don’t ever fucking do that again”. I didn’t say another word on the ride home or back at our apartment until she apologized. I can say that these types of incidents are few and far between, and I think my response and the expectation of my response has something to do with that.
I had something happen middle of last week that qualifies as a “severe negative life event”. Overall, she has been great. She has already made a number of adjustments to help me in the situation. That said, we had a conversation last Friday that started to piss me off. She started to dwell and talk excessively about the impact on her, and talk about what she could and could not do down the road, and her fear and worry, and I was like “Wait a fucking minute here, this is HAPPENING TO ME, NOT YOU, DON’T MAKE THIS ABOUT YOU”. She continued on that line of discussion for a bit, and finally I said “Stop, stop digging yourself in the hole, no more discussion”. The next day she apologized, and I let it go. The female desire for security, safety is just so powerful. I think the natural instinct is to one level sympathize and want to comfort you, but at the same time that hardwiring is triggering that “OMG, I’m worried about how this could affect me” thought/emotion.
There has been much interesting discussion in the last couple of threads both with Ciaran’s comments and those exchanges, and the tit-for-tat stuff. The truth of the matter IMO, is that to some extent the “right” move for any man depends on what cards he is playing with. The guy holding a pair of deuces can’t play the same game as the guy holding 4 aces, but the guy holding 4 aces would be stupid to play the game as if he is holding a pair of deuces. And let’s be real…99.99% of women play the game to the maximum extent of the cards they hold. Actually, many are bluffers playing the game beyond the cards they hold, and you as the man just have to call the bluff. You have to be willing to go all in with your chips. Most women will fold.
I’ll add one more thing. Over the Christmas holidays, my wife got very upset over something related to something I didn’t do. It led to perhaps our worst fight ever. Anyhow, I had time to think about it, and I realized that I was mostly in the wrong, and that I should have done something that inconvienced/required some extra effort because of the importance she attached to it. In this case, I apologized.
One of the tricky things I think with a LTR/marriage is knowing when you have to play the part of ruthless bastard, and absolutely stick to your guns, and when you need to be the one to admit error and give ground. That said, in my opinion always “giving in” to get peace is a recipe for long-term disaster and establishes the wrong frame and rewards bad behavior.
@jf12 492
Naw, it’s the hay on your breath.
#494 “Regarding these “emotion tests”, “moodiness” as a test of commitment, my instinct is I have close to a zero tolerance policy”
I *think* I was trying to do what was socially encouraged and recognize that my wife simply was “being a woman”. So I didn’t necessarily treat her outbursts as anything, except her wanting to outburst. Water off the duck’s back, etc. Socrates’ “after it thunders it rains”. It happens, and no big deal to me.
But I was wrong to treat it so. Every instance should have been ruthlessly snipped in the bud.
#485 ” Certainly marriage 2.0 at worst incentives wives to be bad and at best does not encourage them to be good.”
Doesn’t it give you some pause in your assessment of the statistical probability of women being good wives now that even in the darkest depths of teh patriarchiest times when women were treated as property, had no rights, no power, no money, and were totally dependent on the goodwill of men, whether married to them or as widows, even then a huge fraction of wives could not contain their contempt for their husbands?
Ciaran 478:
I can’t speak for BV but I’d make the following observations based on his writings over the time I’ve known him online and the exchanges today.
1. BV has been a married family man and beta provider like you. He’s also been a dating “free agent” who’s applied a lot of Game and so-called “red pill” material with what sounds like quite a bit of success as a divorced man. He splits his time between the metro East Coast and the rural Midwest, so it sounds like he has a broad swath of experience.
2. It sounds like many of the women BV knows and interacts with are high status professional women, many divorced, and many with their own money. It sounds like most of the women he knows are physically attractive, urbane, well read and respected in their fields. For a man of a certain age and station, and not seeking marriage, these women would be very good company (for a while).
3. But that doesn’t mean he’s being ambitious. It also doesn’t mean these women are high value women for dating or relationships. To the contrary, from his descriptions, most of them are selfish, self-absorbed, shallow, demanding, inconsiderate, and immature. A few sound coarse and cynical.
4. These types of women – 35 and up, divorced or never married, and financially self-sufficient, are PERFECT for men like BV. Most of them are sweet enough to want marriage; but independent enough to walk away with no muss no fuss if and when it ends.
5. BV is perfect for them too – he has high expectations for them which creates the dominance they crave. He holds them to those expectations and walks away if he feels like it. Though he has high expectations, he doesn’t demand commitment or exclusivity, mostly because he doesn’t want it from them and has seen He has the money and status they like; and comes off with the confidence that tingles them. He isn’t needy or clingy. He is older and has his own money so he doesn’t make them feel like cougars.
6. BV gives these women the things they absolutely crave, what they need like they need to breathe air; and that they cannot get anywhere else: Attention, validation and affirmation of their worth as women, as sexual creatures. Most men don’t understand they need this. BV does, and he gives it to them. He makes them feel pretty, wanted, special, and that they’re not sluts or bad people (even though some of them probably were sluts and some probably are bad people). He reminds them of their younger days when they were prettier, less jaded, more wide-eyed and innocent, less experienced in the ways of the world’s dark underbelly ugliness, and still believed in all that can be good about relationships. In return, they give him sex and companionship.
7. I don’t think he’s complaining so much as he’s simply noting and observing the facts about the women he knows and dates. They are what they are, and he accepts them for that with equal parts wistfulness, cynical “that’s just the way it is”, and chagrin.
8. Last thing: I would gather most of the women BV knows are not high value women for relationships or marriage. (Just because a woman is slender, attractive, urbane, well read, and good at her job does NOT mean she is suitable for marriage to a high value man.) If they were high value women, they would know how to attract a high value man AND KEEP HIM LONG-TERM. In my experience (and probably BV’s), most high value women are married off early to high value men, and stay with those high value men throughout their lives. A high value woman knows what a high value man looks like, and does absolutely everything she can to keep him. What you’re seeing is BV noting the absolute rarity and dearth of high value women.
I guess it will always surprise and sadden me that women claim they like nerds, i.e. that every woman claims she is different. One of my least favorite times was during my 20th high school reunion when so many (former) girls that had turned me down said that they would have gone out with me if I had asked them. Until redpill reading I just kind of assumed women were naturally mean in pretending to be forgetful. Now I know that one of the natural mechanisms in keeping women mean is making them forgetful.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/gwendolyn-kansen/2014/05/when-youre-a-logical-girl-with-an-emotional-boyfriend/
“If you’re aloof like me and you’re constantly falling in love with extroverted and super-emotional guys”
“You might not care much about him at first”
“A couple weeks later, he asks to walk you home.”
“You tell him you don’t know what contentment feels like”
“you start fighting” (n.b. Heh. Start. Heh.)
“He takes everything as criticism”
….
“You’ll slowly warm up to your new boyfriend, who’s a little bit boorish”
MM is Susan’s chief ankle biter now.
That is one hell of a trick he pulls off. I have no idea how he manages to bite ankles with his lips firmly planted on her ass at all times.
Attention, validation and affirmation of their worth as women, as sexual creatures. Most men don’t understand they need this.
This is pure gold. In fact, I would go so far as to say that women desire this sexual validation from men (they find attractive) more than the actual sex itself.
Well, OK, except for the supermen (which includes everyone on the Internet except me), 99% of men have experienced the inner feeling that leads to the outward behavior of “kiss up, kick down.” Not that men always act on it; decent men don’t. It’s a sign of virtue to treat all people the same regardless of rank or status. But not all men are virtuous.
So let me explain to the rest of you how it feels to be ordinary. When it comes to both men and women, we ordinary men can sense when a person is superior to us in status (or rank or even virtue), when inferior, and when evenly matched. With women, this is more directly a straight-up matter of relative SMV. With men it’s more complicated, but we can sense it. For instance, in a conference room full of equals and inferiors, we can be loquacious, confident and even dominating. Make us the junior-most person in a room full of senior management or cabinet secretaries, and we get quiet. (I am talking about us ordinary men, not the rest of you, so bear with me.)
The same will happen with women. And it works short term at a party or long term in a relationship. When we feel in our bones that she’s out of our league, we are more tentative and apologetic, less confident, and so on. When we know she is in our league or (especially) a click below, we are diffident, confident, etc.
Ea natura multitudinus est.
So, yes, a man can be “alpha enough for her.” This is why it’s not hopeless for literally every many below the top 20%. Such men are disadvantaged by nature and that natural disadvantage has been compounded by modern convention, but it’s not hopeless. Nor must they necessarily rely on “beta game.” Nor must they become alpha or surrender. I entirely agree that men should self-improve to the extent that they can, especially with regard to fitness, which is a good thing to do anyway. But these threads so often drift down to reductionist binary “alpha or suicide” arguments and/or (also not mutually exclusive) the insistence that only a complete personality transplant can accomplish anything.
#501 Yes, the essence of Game. Although I’m not yet clear why treating a random woman I’ve just met as a sexual creature works so very well, but treating my supposedly loving wife as a sexual creature works so very poorly.
The Great Divide is between those who claim that women are naturally full of sugar and spice and naturally eager to please a man provided he’s good enough, and those who know the others are wrong.
Mrs. Gamer has challenged me to find a gf. Stay tuned.
@Jf12
It’s always a bummer man, on that we agree. But don’t beat yourself about it, because it could be just lip service. I have noticed that when a woman says ” I would have totally gone out with you if you asked” type statement, they are saying it from a hindsight being 20/20, as well as it makes them feel better about not giving you a shot. It’s basically a sly way of saying, you should have manned up and just asked. Of course, they completely forget that they never gave you an inkling that action would have been welcomed.
As we all discussed previously, they don’t like nerds, they like HAWT guys that may have a nerdy interest or 2. They think they like nerds because the hot guy with a nerdy interest is viewed through the halo effect lens. Being a big fan of South Park, I’m reminded of the high school musical parody. After the boys do their hilarious song, ( do what you want to do, just as long as it’s cool with everyone else lol ) Stan asks why Wendy is still following Brighton around, after he put all this effort into that song and dance, under the impression that she would go back to him since he embraced high school musical. Scott Malkinson says ” I think girls just like that Brighton kid, no matter what he does “. That episode reminds me to do shit I want, not what I think women want. Women aren’t into the interest, just whatever hawt guy is involved in said interest.
“ I would go so far as to say that women desire this sexual validation from men (they find attractive) more than the actual sex itself.”
Yes, and women desire this sexual validation at all ages and stages of their lives. It’s why so many women get so dissatisfied in their marriages – because hubby is low value from the get go and she settled with/for him. Or he’s lost value as he’s aged.
It’s just that this desire for sexual validation gets turned up, way, way up, as a woman gets older. The need, intense craving, for sexual validation is far, far more pronounced as a woman ages, goes post-Wall, and gains professional accolades even as she loses physical attractiveness. She’s still a woman, but seen less as a woman and more as a generic human being. As she ages she finds out more and more what the life of the average 19 year old man looks like – sexually invisible to most members of the opposite sex.
In our increasingly narcissistic and sexually permissive society, men capitalize on this. It’s why high status men like BV can date such women with such success, almost completely on his terms.
The problem for men like BV is that such women revert to traditional sex role expectations as they regress to being 23 year old women in 43 year old bodies – “wine me, dine me, then you can 69 me.” “Hold the door open, treat me like a lady, pay for the meals and the drinks and the entertainment, return my calls and texts promptly”.
Essentially what these women are saying is “I want to be treated like the pretty lady I believe I am. If you at least buy me a nice dinner and a bottle of Cab Sav before you take me back to the hotel and fuck me, then I can put on the façade that I made you work for it. And therefore, I’m not easy, I’m not a slut; I’m not cheap, I’m not low value. I AM WORTHY of your time, attention and money. I am a worthy woman to be taken out and shown a good time before I let you use me sexually.
#506 yeah, I shouldn’t get so wrapped around the axle.
Hawt guy with a side of nerd would have been my preferred persona, if I had been born that way, and if I had known and gotten a much earlier start, maybe I would have tried and succeeded. I’m now stuck trying to force my through towards nerd guy with a side of hawt, but my window is closing anyway so it’s kind of pointless except as an experiment.
“Women aren’t into the interest, just whatever hawt guy is involved in said interest.”
Although much is made in the manosphere about alpha widows, and rightly so, a lot of women are widowed during the playoffs even by betas. Take that, you … you … (searching for epithet) … women, you! I confidently predict there will be a lot of Watch Dogs widows, which will cheer a lot of us men up.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/06/watch-dogs-release-date-leaked-in-trailer
@Nekros:
“As we all discussed previously, they don’t like nerds, they like HAWT guys that may have a nerdy interest or 2. They think they like nerds because the hot guy with a nerdy interest is viewed through the halo effect lens.”
O: Bascially, Tony Stark, Stringer Bell, guys like that, NOT Reed Richards, et al. This is ESPECIALLY TRUE in Black America, I don’t care how many Faux Female “Blerds” plead to the contrary.
You can’t be straigthahead brainpower smart; you have to be a combo of that AND socially saavy too. Which is exceptionally dificult for really smart guys to pull off.
Fried ice, basically…
O.
#505 Take her along so it’s on the up-and-up. Have her choose a woman for you, the hotter the better, and force her to point out the woman to you so that the woman notices you with your wife. Then saunter over there and let your wife see you picking up another woman in front of her.
I think maybe arousing actual girlfriend interest in a woman may be too dangerous than just pickup interest.
#502 Extraverts are not supermen, and are not more selected by women than introverts.
Y: “So maybe Cioran is the mythical Beta with a side of Alpha, and aunt Susan just let him go?”
Well, she booted me and Morpheus. And others.
I don’t claim to be remotely alpha, but I do know that I’ve never had the lesser-beta problems that most guys complain about here, past age 19 or so.
I’ll keep saying it: my platform is for male optionality… for being married, or being a player, or changing lanes, or even both simultaneously. I don’t subscribe to the (HUS) monogamy/marriage-only model, and I don’t subscribe to the Roissy/Roosh marriage-is-for-suckers model.
Hey Obs, keep in mind that Reed Richards did get Sue Storm. But his stretching powers in certain areas may have inspired a few tingles here or there, if you catch my drift. Haha
Plus, as being one of the few with enough focus to use the ultimate nullifier, that would make him the ultimate alpha! So there we go, a nerd can be the apex alpha of all alpha men… just as long as he has what Marvel describes as ” the universe’s most devastating weapon “.
And yes, I too hope there will be a lot of Watchdog widows. Funny you bring it up, a buddy and I were talking about the game and he said Aiden Pearce uses his phone more than a 20 you old college chick who hasn’t used Facebook in a week. I was struggling to breathe I was laughing so hard.
20 year old*
Deti, thanks for your characterization. It’s largely accurate. I’m a bit more protective of the women I see and dislike your characterization of them, but you are correct: they are not the chaste young flowers that they would wish to be, or guys like me would wish to encounter. Everyone has a history, now.
In fairness, I think we should note that neither is someone like BV a strong LTR candidate. As the poster child for what happens to a greater beta who has a bad quarter, amidst the panicked ‘last call’ hypergamous rush of a 40 year-old woman who would prefer to still be a 23 year-old Vogue model, I’m far too cautious to pretend that I am also 23. In the case of son#1, who *is* 23, my efforts are focused on instruction that will save him 20 years of futile effort.
So guys like me don’t buy into the “Let’s start over!” pabulum. (Or at least we don’t, once we try it once.) That happens when you rebuild your balance sheet twice in 10 years, and the State takes your children away, while criminalizing your desire to see them. We don’t sacrifice sovereignty just because it’s what we wish for, were trained for, and lastly, know very well how to do. I’m honest about that, though women tend to take it as a challenge, and set out to conquer their very own Christian Grey.
Another wrinkle is that having understood hypergamy for the first time, just two years ago, I now am a primary beneficiary. There are no successful, accomplished women I’ve dated who aren’t actively seeking to trade-up and “show” husband #1. All men have revealed flaws after 10 or 20 years. My apex female experiences are with women who abandoned massively successful men, men who outstrip me in public and financial celebrity.
This is behind my confidence in the idea Murray discusses as the “merger marriage” of the middle-aged — a healthy combination of interests, more than it is a romantic hole-in-one that is what we bring (when blue pill) to the marital table in our 20’s. But that stuff is not the domain of this blog, I don’t believe.
Upthread, Escoffier has mentioned twice “alpha or suicide”. While hae has suggested alternatives, it may well has come down to this. When I first started looking for answers, I watched all the Man, Woman, Myht videos. In the first of his four part misandry series he does go into suicide. In the 70s rates between men and women were close. Since then, rates for women have gone down while men have skyrocketed. Seeing how badly betas get treated in the SMP/MMP, it’s easy to see why.
A while ago, RoK rqan a post on what socety deserves considering how it treats men. I didn’t need to read it.
@deti 498,
Thanks for the explanation.
These negative characteristics – “selfish, self-absorbed, shallow, demanding, inconsiderate, and immature” – how much do they correlate with the positive characteristics – apex females, highly successful, tall, attractive?
After our little round of insulting each other, it occurred to me that that the type of woman BV chooses is likely to be rather self centered, so there’s a selection bias there. Whereas the type of woman I choose is nurturing and giving – another selection bias.
So that’s the answer to my question right there. Both he and I have sampled different portions of the female population, and have come to different conclusions about the nature of women and relationships with them.
BV’s playing the field, plus, is loaded. My suspicion is he’d have to slum it down two or three SES levels, to find nicer single women. Everything’s super-competitive at the UMC+ level.
@ Escoffier 502
So, yes, a man can be “alpha enough for her.” This is why it’s not hopeless for literally every many below the top 20%.
Another point – one may be in the bottom 20% in one setting but the top 20% in another. Your example of status was a relative one – a meeting room with peers or senior management. Let’s put our protagonist in a room with new hires instead, or better yet, interns. Now our lowly guy becomes the senior man, and the chicks dig him!
Hypergamy is based on relative status. It’s easy to boost status by changing social groups. A college guy can date a high school girl. An upper classman, an underclasswoman. A new hire, a college girl. Etc.
@OffTheCuff 518;
My suspicion is he’d have to slum it down two or three SES levels, to find nicer single women.
I think you’re right. My suspicion is that should he find such nicer women, he would find them dull. Even if they did pick him up for a date and give him thoughtful gifts.
#485
We’re probably still talking past one another here. Ciaran’s argument is that „college educated men with decent jobs” – a minority of men – are „doing the beta provider strategy successfully” because they „have kids and don’t get divorced by their wives”. (It must be stressed that he’s not saying all college educated men with decent jobs can do this successfully. In other words, the men for whom marriage 2.0 is a good idea are pretty much a minority within a minority.) Other men like Yohami are apparently of the opinion that it’s a stretch to call this success, since marriage 2.0, with all its risks, is still a bad investment if all you can realistically get out of it are children and a wife who graciously agrees not to divorce your ass. Ciaran basically says you cannot hope for more benefits in marriage 2.0 if you’re just a beta, which is probably true. You need to be at least a higher beta for that. However, if you’re that high in the male sexual hierarchy, marriage 2.0 is probably not the most rewarding lifestyle you can have. So it’s a settled issue that marriage 2.0 is a bad investment for the majority of men. Can we agree on that?
#516
It’s because the trends you see in the sexual marketplace and society in general are self-reinforcing. Success breeds success, and failure breeds failure. A growing segment of men are leaving the SMP altogether while Game is gaining ground among a small minority of sexually successful men. Badger has written about it here:
http://badgerhut.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/guys-opting-out-of-the-game/
There are apparently similar trends among women. A growing segment of young women completely cease marketing themselves as potential wives/girlfriends, which demotivates betas even further, whereas a small but growing minority of women hitting the Wall are increasingly predatory, and probably also shrewd, in their quest for husbands and/or impregnators.
It’s the same in economic life. More and more losers, and more and more profits for the increasingly small and entrenched cohort of winners. It’s happening all around the world. There’s apparently a Brazilian proverb: if you’re not the first, you’re the last. Alpha or suicide. It’s the law of the land. It’s a game where the best move is not to play.
@Stephanie Shepard
Due to market conditions (changes of relative values), “the mating game” more often resembles the “war of attrition” model. Women being “prizes” in their twenties and perhaps early thirties, and “auctioneers” later on. Of course, it implies that men who don’t manage to become “the prize” in time are better off not playing the game anymore.
#485
By the way, what actually counts as intellectual probity in such cases?
Look at these posts:
http://marriedmansexlife.com/2011/04/girl-game-give-him-a-fair-warning/
http://marriedmansexlife.com/2013/02/how-to-fair-warning-a-husband-that-doesnt-listen-before-things-are-too-late-to-fix/
Here Athol Kay recommends dissatisfied wives that they blackmail their husbands in order to get what they want out of marriage 2.0. His own words from one of the comments:
„Victor is correct – there is no choice on this for men. Either you do what I suggest (or some variant on it) and have a shot at a happy marriage, or roll the dice on how badly she wants to screw you over in the aftermath of divorce.”
If you have only one option in life, and you choose it under severe penalty, you are, by definition, a prisoner, a slave. A legally owned one, I might add. This the only reason his advice actually works – the luckless husbands cannot bail. It’s the same reason this could never work the other way around i.e. it’s impossible for a husband to blackmail his wife to do anyting because he lacks the legal power to back up his threat.
And this is advice coming from a man who says he isn’t a feminist and that he’s symphatetic to red pill ideas. Imagine what sort of advice wives are getting from people who ARE feminists and have NO tolerance for red pill ideas i. e. 95% of people who give such advice.
These are just some of the women who’ve actually sought advice from Athol. How many women out there are getting the same advice from some other source? How many women have already decided it on their own to do this? How many millions of wives have resorted to such blackmail? Think about it.
How many husbands are living in such psychological Hell, putting up with a horrid, sexless marriage only because they are blackmailed into it? Isn’t it safe to assume that many of them nevertheless go around claiming that their marriage is nevertheless great, that they made the right choice by getting married, and they do this mostly to sooth their terrible psychological pain? How many of them do this on the Internet?
Let’s assume that all husbands who defend their choice fall into this category. THAT is intellectual probity. It’s not intellectual probity to say that many of them have been deluded by feminist dogma and thus actually believe they made a good investment. It’s not intellectual probity to say that many of them are putting a positive spin on their irreversible decision simply because they want to feel better about themselves. It’s not intellectual probity to say many of them simply didn’t know any better – they got married because it was expected of them, because it was unthinkable for them to choose another path, because they were ignorant of the risks and potential rewards.
“So, where are we now in this thread? Everyone who is not a player is buying his wife’s tampons while carrying her purse?”
I’m pretty sure that happens regularly in the majority of marriages. Yeah, I don’t have the scientific source to back it up, but I don’t care. I accept it as truth, and for me, that’s enough.
My wife won’t ask me to buy feminine products and never did, but she second-guesses me all the time. I called her on it and her shaming argument is that I’m insecure because I called her on her crap. That’s what precipitated the latest go-round. We still went out dancing last night. I danced with a cute young thing who gave me a big (non-A-frame) hug on the dance floor right in front of Mrs. Gamer.
I’m pretty sure that happens regularly in the majority of marriages. Yeah, I don’t have the scientific source to back it up, but I don’t care. I accept it as truth, and for me, that’s enough.
I’ve written extensively about the limitations of “scientific” studies of human behavior to actually and accurate describe what goes on in the real world, and taken a large share of criticism for my skepticism. The alternative is not “science or false.” There is a better way to investigate human phenomena, the dialectal-observational way.
And that way does not yield the conclusion you assert. Props for being honest about your willfulness. You want it to be true, and so it is. You apparently have nothing to go on. Nothing scientific, anecdotal, observational, nothing. So how is this any better, or any different, than what the various feminists, leftists and others whom you criticize do?
For all those endorsing “alpha or suicide,” since most of you admit you are not alpha, why are you still alive?
Everything you stated in 524 has been addressed. You insist that all claims to the contrary from men living in their own marriages are all lies–must be lies. Why? It can’t be because you have direct experience. You just know based on some general principle. And that principle is that all higher truth, all claims to goodness or virtue or happiness are false. Because those things don’t exist. There is only terror, the primacy of terror. All of the nicer, better, higher things about man’s experience–love, virtue, nobility, beauty–are lies man tells himself to avoid facing the abyss squarely.
That’s probity. There are no happy men, only deluded men. Actually, you seem to go further than that and insist that they are not really deluded; they know they are miserable; they merely lie in public to save face. Which make less sense than the “delusion” argument that Nietzsche and others make.
Surely you are right that there are some men who are miserable and who lie out of shame or whatever. Acknowledging the truth of that is not probity. Probity is the insistence that it must be ALL men, or at least all married men, based on the underlying insistence that there cannot be any such thing as a happy marriage, because there is no such thing as love, or if there is, no woman is capable of it. The insistence on believing the worst because it is the worst. Counterclaims are waived away. You know better than the person actually living in the marriage. In all cases.
Hollen,
“Other men like Yohami are apparently of the opinion that it’s a stretch to call this success, since marriage 2.0, with all its risks, is still a bad investment if all you can realistically get out of it are children and a wife who graciously agrees not to divorce your ass. ”
Im of the opinion that most relationships suck, whether the participants report they are “happy” or not. Marriage is just a relationship that has a contract to last for an undetermined amount of time and has money bet on it. My view is that marriage sucks because people naturally sucks and they dont know to do better, probably they “cant” do better and “crap” is the best they can aspire to, but that still means crap.
But why do I say relationships suck: because it’s almost universally that they are built around the needs of one person and the desire of the other person to fulfill those needs so he/she can fulfill more private fantasies. One sets the price and the other one pays it. This invariably becomes that the one setting the price grows to abuse that power, setting the price a little higher every time and menacing to withdraw if the expectations are not met, and the one paying the price keeps bending over because they dont want to lose all they have invested, but eventually start whining. This cycles with less of respect, losses of idealizations and acumulation of broken payments to a breaking point till the relationship collapses because the price to pay is too high and either the payer is disqualified or the payer doesnt want to pay anymore.
This all may take one day or 40 years, but there’s your romance script.
This is what every man putting a woman on a pedestal and every woman trying to tame an alpha jerk faces.
To avoid this script you need that the one in control, the one setting the price, is fair, balanced, a good leader, and doesnt abuse power, that the price and conditions are good for the common good.
We all know women dont met the criteria. Maybe they can perform well for kids but not with men. When put as the price setter in a relationship with men, they just go crazy exploiting the shit out of this system in a mad downspiral.
We all know most alpha price setters are jerks, we all heard the poor delicate girl flowers complaining about those jerks and their insane conditions. If you take those girls and put them in a relationship with more servient men these same girls will then procede to do the insane pricing but that’s another subject.
So what’s left? what percentage of relationships, in general, doesnt have a commander that will slowly or quickly blow up everything? which % of relationships is not following a narcissist-codependent dance?
How to screen for “good” relationships? I look for older couples that have been together for around over years, where they wife does zero nagging, there’s no complaining / winning involved, the man is the leader but the wife is firm, the man is not a hot head, the woman doesnt do manipulation games. In total I’ve seen two couples like this out of the thousands of people I’ve met. My reported rate of successful marriage/relationships is 0,0001%
Now if people were looking for good relationships they would be screening for partner with whom they could do this. What they are doing though, in general is looking for someone who’s gonna pay the price, or someone who’s gonna help them fulfill a secret fantasy. Even in the case that they are able to get into that deal, I can’t call it a success because it’s an illusion. It is going to get broken, it is going to ruin them.
Getting what you want is not a success if what you want is dooming you. Calling it marriage doesnt make it sacred.
* * *
So In my opinion since most of relationships are this kind of crap, consolidating that kind of deal and betting on that you are going to sustain it for a lifetime or else you’re going to lose big, money status family house etc…. and putting this breaking up reward on the hands of the person who was most likely setting the price already. What? if there was a chance she was going to abuse the power this grants her an immunity card for doing so. So fuck it. Fuck that deal.
*How to screen for “good” relationships? I look for older couples that have been together for around [20] years,
#527
The reason I can’t be bothered to dig up scientific evidence for my convictions is because I got tired of Aunt Giggles snarkily asking “what is your source for this claim?” whenever she sees a statement she didn’t like. I can’t stand that attitude. It’s completely disingenuous because it’s not like such people would ever change their mind due to any amount of scientific evidence.
(Yeah I know you will say I’m exactly the same. The difference is that I speak the truth whereas they don’t. End of story.)
And it’s not like the evidence in question always exists. Do you think it’ll ever be proven that more wives cheat than husbands? That the average women is more promiscuous than the average man? Do you think any insitution will ever fund such research? I’m also aware that Sturgeon’s law – 90% of everything is crap – also applies to all material paraded as scientific “survey” and “research”.
How is my point of view better than that of feminists and leftists? I tell you how: their worldview is based on completely groundless, nonsensical fantasy pulled out of their asses. We can all cite examples:
– it’s common for older, sleazy, wealthy, shitbag husbands to heartlessly divorce their loyal, gold-hearted wives and trade them in for a younger, hotter woman
– marriage benefits men more than women, in fact, marriage 2.0 is a bonanza for nasty men who just want to exploit some poor woman (hi, Jen!)
– there is a vast conspiracy of patriarchal, misogynist forces that props up a rape culture that victimizes Western women en masse everyday; there are tens of millions of evil, nasty men high-fiving their rapist buddies all the time
– there was, and largely still is, a patriarchal system which was/is a bonanza for evil, sleazy, sex-crazed, power-hungry men who want nothing but to abuse their wives and other women left and right while laughing at them
– women who make false accusations of rape and physical abuse pretty much don’t exist, or if they do, they are such a small minority they’re negligible
– men who want to have sex with women that are more than 5 years younger are infernal sexual perverts
– MRAs are nasty, bigoted misogynists who actually make the reform of the family court system more difficult by giving the supporters of such reform a bad name; this is tragic because feminists support such reform (there are shitbag female journalists who actually assert this; no joke)
– Western women are routinely victimized and discriminated against in the workplace, in college, on the street and elsewhere
– the reason for the majority of divorces is that the husband is a sleazebag cheater
– the world is chock-full of sexist, creepy, bitter single men with a sense of entitlement, all of whom are shrewdly presenting themselves as so-called nice guys
– women just want a genuinely nice guy who treats them right
– “deadbeat dads” are all around the place and they are a huge social problem
I could go on. It’s all BS. All of it. Without exception. Based on nothing but hatred, resentment and complete self-delusion. And maybe other sick stuff I can’t be bothered to think about. Yet all this is accepted as unquestionable truth by the mainstream media. By average women. By average tradcons. By white knights. And so on.
I won’t waste my time on them. They’re all idiots. I know I’m right and they’re wrong. I don’t need evidence for that. I won’t debate with them. If you come across an idiot who says 2 +2 = 5 or that a triangle has four sides, do you start a discussion with him? No. Do you need evidence that 2 + 2 =4? No.
@ Höllenhund 524,
How many husbands are living in such psychological Hell, putting up with a horrid, sexless marriage only because they are blackmailed into it? Isn’t it safe to assume that many of them nevertheless go around claiming that their marriage is nevertheless great, that they made the right choice by getting married, and they do this mostly to sooth their terrible psychological pain? How many of them do this on the Internet?
How many? In the absence of hard evidence, one can not make any conclusion. That is intellectual probity.
What is not intellectual probity is, in the absence of evidence, to assume that many of those married men who do suffer horrid, sexless marriages are defending their choices on the internet. Maybe some are. On the other hand, perhaps some of those who complain of horrid, sexless marriages are making it up or exaggerating. Until someone does a real study, it’s all empty speculation.
@ Hund, Ciaran
I furnished some statistics over on the She-Wolf thread.
I am NOT one insisting on “scientific” proof about every human phenomenon. I am one who persistently says that such “proof” is often not possible and that the attempt to use natural science “method” to investigate the human things is the wrong approach and the old observational-dialectical approach–the method founded by Socrates and continued profitably for a couple thousand years–is superior. More insightful. More productive of useful insights.
In any case, actually, many of the things you cite are amenable to investigation (up to a point) by social science method because they are countable, and counting is what social science does reasonably well. So, to take just one of the points you cite, social science indicates that in recent years/decades, the rate of female cheating has been closing in on the male rate and the gap has almost completely closed. Moreover, if you look at the rate of increase, the male rate is flat or slightly up while the female rate is increasing at a much faster clip. That’s all self-reported (with all that entails) but it’s illustrative of something, not least that social science is capable of supporting or confirming what is observable and amenable to being sussed out through dialectic.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of social science, for now I will just mention three.
First, it’s often used to push a political or cultural agenda. When you are told something that fairly obviously contradicts what your “lying eyes” see AND that conclusion fairly obviously favors one side of a hot debate (and not the unpopular or under-funded side), be skeptical.
Second, social science—even when it’s right about various empirical questions—not only has nothing to say about moral questions, based on its own premises, it cannot even admit that moral questions are valid. Moral questions to social science are not “fact,” they are opinion or preference. So, social science may be able to tell us much about the what-why-who-how of cheating, but it must refuse to pass judgment on cheating. It must eschew “value judgments.” Since cheating is above all a moral question, social science is here worse than useless because it denies that any moral distinction can ever be made. Morality is just a preference and as such irrational. Social science thus begins from a premise that is contradictory or in opposition to the phenomenon it purports to study. Thus, while it congratulates itself for being “objective,” it is in truth anything but. It begins the conversation confident that it “knows” there is nothing moral or immoral about cheating, which means it begins from a position of misunderstanding the phenomenon it purports to investigate.
Third, social science believes itself to be a true science, like the natural science, whose method it applies to human behavior. But it has never succeeded on natural science’s own terms, which is to be predictive. All the classic tests of the scientific method—outlined most clearly in Kuhn perhaps—the social sciences routinely fail.
@ Escoffier
All the classic tests of the scientific method—outlined most clearly in Kuhn perhaps—the social sciences routinely fail.
I’m gonna get picky here. I think that you meant Popper, not Kuhn. Kuhn claimed that there was no scientific method. Polanyi may have preceded Kuhn in claiming that. Feyerabend certainly followed up strongly on that idea. Laudan drove the nail in the coffin. Some PoS (philosophers of science, heh) are trying to resurrect the notion that there can be a definition of some sort for “scientific method” but they don’t seem to be very persuasive. Demarcation is dead, still.
Does anybody remember the old Doc Savage books? The men on this site remind me a lot of Doc Savage’s cohorts.
Theres no scientific method, because of scientists.
I do tend to get Popper and Kuhn mixed up, but I think I meant Kuhn in this case. As I recall, he does not deny the scientific method. Rather, he denies that any given “scientific” understanding at a given time is ever the final objective truth. Any theory no matter how well established is always subject to revision or even obsolescence or disproof. Newton<Einstein, etc.
The method by which the old paradigm is overthrown, though, he does not question.
Escoffier, I think that’s Popper: a theory cannot be proven but it can be falsified. Kuhn disregarded the method of accumulating theories instead and made it look more passion driven and artistic.
Besides, calling the method “scientific” is misleading. The tool to build science cannot be falsified therefore we use it because of preference and belief.
@ Escoffier
Kuhn denies that The Scientific Method ™ has any relevance to theory acceptance. Theory acceptance is based on a whole host of things, some of which are irrational. Hence, who cares about The Scientific Method ™? If you can’t tie it to theory acceptance, why does it matter? Kuhn’s attack was indirect, for sure. Feyerabend’s attack was brutal and wide-ranging and very powerful. Unfortunately, politics prevented Feyerabend’s attack from being overwhelmingly effective.
@ Escoffier
By “politics” I meant that PAF created drama by belittling his critics who screwed up reading Against Method.
@ Escoffier
The method by which the old paradigm is overthrown, though, he does not question.
What??? (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the book to read.)
I never read Feyerabend. I read Popper and Kuhn the same year (nearly 20 years ago) and only once each. My recollection was that, yes, Popper was all about “falsifiability” while Kuhn was about “paradigm shifts.” Popper is clearly a lesser book than Kuhn’s, not to say Kuhn is necessarily right, only that he is more ambitious. My recollection is also that Kuhn is a sort of nihilist/relativist, which is to say, the drift of his argument denies that there is any underlying truth or permanence to reality. What the method does is continually disprove what we think we “know” and he seems to imply that this process will go on forever, or as long as there is science.
In any case, we can go back to Descartes if you want. The hallmarks of the method are replicability of experiments, controlling for extraneous factors, and (the most important) predictivity. To which Popper adds falsefiability. All this works quite well for chemical and physical phenomena, much less well for human phenomena.
#535 not all science is good science. There is no demarcation between bad science and no science, but good science is definitely distinctly scientific compared to no science.
Hoellenhund at 522,
Thanks for responding.
Escoffier,
To answer your question as to why those “alpha or suicide” people aren’t dead yet, They live in hope of finding an answer.
#528
Excuse me but this clearly qualifies as hyperbole.
#529 I remain convinced that the single best shot at *mutually* happy marriage is when a woman deliberately chooses a nice guy who would let her walk all over him, but she treats him like lord and master all the time. I remain convinced that the vast majority of women will never treat men properly like that even if forced to at gunpoint.
I remain convinced that the worst marriages are when a woman refuses to let a beta lead, and these constitute the plurality of marriages. Also bad is when an alpha abuses his position, lording it over his wife and mistresses.
But “All married men are miserable” is not hyperbole?
And, what I said is not hyperbole. That IS philosophic probity. You can deny that it applies to your case, but it seems to me from reading your words that it does. All things good, decent or higher–at least when it comes to women or the relations between men and women–you deny. You dismiss out of hand those married men who give accounts of their own happy marriages. You are making a categorical claim in the strict sense. Alleged counter-instances can’t be correct because the premise must be false: there are no good women, women don’t love, etc.
The origin of philosophic probity is not completely groundless. But it’s mistaken all the same. Nietzsche takes atheism for granted, considers it a settled issue. He indicts reason for exposing the horrible truth and then says that the only reasonable response to this truth is to face it and accept it squarely, which also entails accepting that all higher conceits of man are also false: they can’t exist without God and there is no rational basis for any of them. The mistake is not to see the change in rationalism in the 16th century which undercut the old dialectical rationalism which provides a solid ground for the noble.
It’s really no different from the various strands of modern sophism which reduce all human motivations to some form of cynicism. E.g., there is no “courage,” because even a man who charges into direct machine gun fire ostensibly for cause or country or his fellow soldiers is in fact acting either out of pleasure or pride or some delusion. (The delusion point undercuts the main argument, because even if it is a delusion—there is no metaphysical or ontological truth to the man’s self-professed motive, he is nonetheless acting against narrow self-interest based on the belief that these things are true, hence he’s not being cynical.)
So what is the solution for the bottom 50% of men? No amount of game/money can make them attractive to women… I think legalized prostitution would be the best thing even though feminists would hate it… but at least most women wouldn’t have to worry about ‘creepy’ men hitting on them.
The studies you’re looking for are all here:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/papers/
All women, yes, all physically healthy women with a regular menstrual cycle are hypergamous. It is literally written into a woman’s DNA, her endocrine system and her neural synapses. The fact that the Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks dynamic is a biologically occurring event for every woman means every woman is hypergamous by order of degrees.
Can women suppress the behaviors of this innate natural hypergamy by necessity or conviction? Of course, but the physical condition, the impulse and desire for hypergamy is unchanged. Even a controlled hypergamy will still be expressed under socially acceptable and/or environmental conditions.
You want to know why Aunt Giggles, for all her “disowning” of the manosphere, still clings tooth and nail at denying the OVERWHELMING amount of empirical proof that women’s menstrual cycle and hormones predisposes them to AFBB arousals and behaviors?
Because it proves that hypergamy is an inborn feature of the female psyche and female sexuality – and if men are made aware of this their sexual pluralism and all its pretty, duplicitous rationales women covertly employ to optimize their sexual strategies are laid bare, and they are vulnerable.
#548
Where did I say all married men are miserable? Do you really expect me to repeat myself? I said marriage 2.0 is a bad investment for the majority of men, and Ciaran’s comments make it clear that a segment of the minority that considers it a good investment thinks that way because they enter marriage with low expectations i.e. “hey, sounds great, at least I’ll get to reproduce and wifey will probably not divorce my ass”.
@Gamer 526
Sounds like some (or most) of the back and forth in your marriage is somewhat lighthearted, yes? Like your wife “challenging” you to find a gf. Almost sounds like she gets off on watching you show you can do these things. Just wondering- you never fully understand context until you meet someone in person.
Re: Happily or Unhappily Married men:
Gamer posted a men’s health link where guys shared the frequency of sex they were having in their marriage. A good number seemed somewhat healthy, even with kids, and of course some much higher and much lower (and more miserable) than the norm. I got the impression that what’s been discussed here and other “red pill” blogs is largely true- you have to have alpha cred to burn if you want to optimize your chances of a good marriage, because it will, by virtue of figuratively ending the chase for her, inevitably make you less of a prize over time.
#549
– porn
– sexbot
– pay for prostitutes
– castrate yourself or get rid of your sex drive in some other way
– become a hermit
– become a monk
– become a rapist (this one I don’t condone)
– kill yourself
– learn Game and try to attract a woman sufficiently hot to give you a boner (this won’t be easy)
I’ll do a virtual poll here, and answer the questions myself. Ciaran asked, somewhere, I think, how come a man doesn’t just pick some of the (so many to choose from!) women who are being so nice to him, even if those women aren’t quite as attractive as they could be.
Question: does anyone seriously believe this? Does anyone seriously believe that an average man who is treated poorly by women who rate 8 is treated *well* by women who rate 6?
Answer: No. At best he can hope that a woman rate 4 who is getting desperate to settle might make him a sandwich once in a while.
Question: does anyone seriously believe that *most* men encounter quite a number of women who treat those men well?
Answer: You’ve got to be kidding. There is no herd of unicorns out there anywhere, of women trying to find some man to treat well.
#549 one ultimate solution would be to medically manipulate women’s libidos, to artificially raise them a lot, like an order of magnitude higher.
Other than that, there is no real hope for most men, not just the bottom 50%. Of course, the usual advice still helps, but only marginally: “Brush your teeth. Get a good haircut; pay the extra $5 this time. Work out with heavier weights. Etc.”
At best he can hope that a woman rate 4 who is getting desperate to settle might make him a sandwich once in a while.
More probity. Only the worst can be true.
Speaking from experience, I can validate at least in my own case Ciaran’s thesis. The hottest GF I ever had did not treat me particularly well. (I was not blameless either.) My somewhat less pretty but much more good-hearted college GF, OTOH, treated me like a king. My wife, who has a finer soul (and mind) than both of them put together, treats me better still. She objectively not as physically attractive as the hottest one (though arguably more than the college one).
I understand the point often made that men priortize female looks and the pushback against the meme that this makes us “shallow” (as opposed to all those good girls who look past a man’s looks alone). But any man who priotitizes looks above all and marries a hot woman of bad character*, or of unsuitable / incompatible outlook / temperment, is an idiot.
* “all women have bad character” or “character is not something women have, they all act purely in bio-mechanical instinct to protect their self interest” (which is to say the same thing) = probity.
#556 it’s nicer to get turned down from an 8 than a 4.
I don’t believe most men find lesser-attractive women that much less bitchy, or else men wouldn’t go by looks so much.
Men go by looks because we are wired to, the same way women are wired to be hypergamous. Women have a certain advantage in that their wiring does not prioritize looks but balances looks with a range of traits. Wise men do that through effort, even if not prompted by nature. Unwise men stick with looks, which–assuming they can land the woman they find most attractive–is gambling because the soul may be corrupt. And in any case, looks always fade. A house built on sand …
#554, Simple answer: Women only really need to pass one test. The boner test.
When your HB6 ages into an HB2, she wont pass the test no matter how many sammiches she makes you.
@jf12 554;
Ciaran asked, somewhere, I think, how come a man doesn’t just pick some of the (so many to choose from!) women who are being so nice to him, even if those women aren’t quite as attractive as they could be.
That’s not quite what I said. The question is this: given a choice between a more attractive but less nice woman, and a less attractive but more nice woman, which would you choose? My answer is the latter.
The question presupposes that the man is attractive enough to have choices. That eliminates some portion of the male population. The question does not presuppose any statistical relationship between attractive and nice. They could be completely uncorrelated (although I suspect they’re not).
Does anyone seriously believe that an average man who is treated poorly by women who rate 8 is treated *well* by women who rate 6?
I would put this differently. There are more women who rate 6 than 8 according to a normal distribution. And there are more women who rate 6 than 8 who are willing to date a man of attractiveness X, whatever that may be. So therefore, a man who dates 6’s instead of 8’s will have more women to choose among. Assuming that niceness is either uncorrelated or negatively correlated with hotness, his chances of finding a nice women will be much higher when he dates 6’s than 8’s, simply because the pool to select a nice woman among will be bigger.
Mathematics aside, this is just common sense. Lowering standards in one area give you the ability to raise them somewhere else.
“When your HB6 ages into an HB2″
I never bought that sort of logic, to be honest. If we call a 18-year-old girl a HB8, it means she’s a HB8 among 18-year-olds. She’ll be a HB8 when she’s 21, she’ll be a HB8 when she’s 30, she’ll always be a HB8 – when compared to her peers. Provided she takes care of her looks, of course. Men of different ages largely desire different things from women of different ages. 20-year-old girls don’t usually get proposed for marriage, 50-year-old women aren’t normally sought for one-nighters etc.
I agree with the drift of what you say, but the fact is, looks do fade–even for women who take great care of themselves. Wrinkles, sagginess, a little padding, and so on. It will happen, no way around it. It can happen catastrophically–get butch haircut and gain 50 pounds–or slowly, but it will happen.
So, I don’t think an 8 is always an 8. Also, it makes sense to think of the scale both in relative and in absolute terms. You can line up women ranging from 18 to 40 and the hottest on an absolute scale might not be the youngest. In rare cases, it might even be the oldest. But the fattest part of the curve will always trend younger than the tails.
I know a 44-y/o woman who I would say, age-adjusted, is at least a 9 and maybe a 10. But on an absolute scale, 7 or maybe 8 on her best day.
Yeah, looks fade. That’s a given. But it’s beside the point, really. 28-yr-old women aren’t competing with 18-yr-old women, 38-yr-old women aren’t competing with 28-yr-old women and so on. They largely want different things from different men, and different men want different things from them. They are in separate markets, so to speak. If a 35-yr-old woman looks better than 80% of 35-yr-old women, people will say she looks good for her age. She won’t induce as many erections as she did when she was 20, but how is that relevant, really?
It can be relevant in at least two cases:
1) If her husband / mate has very high SMP and lots of options and no character, he can leave her for hotter model. This is exagerated in pop culture, but it does happen.
2) More prevalent, with delayed marriage, the older she gets, the more she’s competing against the youngsters. Especially when it comes to attracting the highest value men.
#564
1) It’s her fault that she married a man without character. And in that particular case she can butt-rape him in divorce court anyway and play the victim, so it’s not that relevant.
2) Well, yeah. If she delays marriage, it’s her choice, and it should be common sense that she’ll face all consequences, good and bad.
And yeah, I just sounded completely like a manospambot. But I couldn’t care less.
“Stephanie, it’s somewhat difficult to find solid studies that prove women are hypergamous”
I am skeptical of this theory. There are too many variables to come to a a conclusion. I would agree throughout history this is probably true. However, in the past century I can’t agree. Are there any studies since the rise of the Industrial Revolution? I can understand the hypergamous theory pertaining to an agricultural economy. If you were to look at hypergamous in an anthropological way, most families married off women. So it would have been the choice of the father and mother more than the choice of the bride.
#559 it’s not hard …
It doesn’t take all that much for me, to be honest. Sweetness and supplication would suffice, I think.
#560 “The question is this: given a choice between a more attractive but less nice woman, and a less attractive but more nice woman, which would you choose? My answer is the latter.”
Me too.
Stephanie,
Women are naturally attracted to good looking, confident & successful men. Only a small % of the male population mets those demands.
Yes, no, maybe?
@ Escoffier,
But really, because “probity,” the insistence on believing only the worst because it is the worst. All higher things must be illusory. This stems, in the final analysis, from a combination of vanity and fear: the vanity that arises from the pose “I alone live without illusions and the rest of you are suckers and hence beneath me”; and the fear of being taken for a sucker, of deception, of the worst kind of deception, self-deception.
I’ve just been reading through your “probity” posts and I find the concept fascinating. It’s so prevalent in some sectors of society, the ‘sphere being one of them.
This reminds me of something I read recently, which described political correctness as a positional good:
But if PC was not really about protecting anyone, and really all about expressing one’s own moral superiority, PC credentials would be akin to what economists call a ‘positional good’.
A positional good is a good that people acquire to signal where they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself apart from others. Positional goods therefore have a peculiar property: the utility their consumers derive from them is inversely related to the number of people who can access them.
Perhaps then probity is a positional good. It is something that is acquired to set on apart from others, as you said, “I alone live without illusions”.
A positional good is only valuable if a few number of people can access it. This has consequences for fringe movements, of which both the manosphere and the social justice movement are examples. Those who identify with the movement are compelled to adopt ever more extreme positions to set them selves apart from the rubes, and possibly to repulse those rubes to keep then from overrunning the movement.
Agree with Ciaran that less hot and nicer is better than hot and less nice. In other words, as I’ve said before, most men are happier with a 5 who loves them and treats them well than with an 8 who is “meh” about them and treats them poorly.
I think that “enough sex” is what a married couple agree on and are satisfied with. There needs to be compromise to accede to the wishes of the higher libido partner. Usually, that means wife will have more sex than she might be satisfied with. It sometimes means that husband will not get sex every single solitary time he wants it. That doesn’t mean they have a bad marriage or that she’s not doing her duty or he’s deprived. It’s just the way life works out, really.
Agree with Esco that it can’t be the case that the vast vast majority of men are miserably unhappy in their marriages. I think it’s more like a bell curve distribution where you have most men in the middle and are satisfied most of the time. The marriage isn’t ecstatically happy; but it isn’t in the shitter either.
I think that in terms of overall marriage satisfaction, there’s a small number of men who are very happy, a large number who are satisfied (most of the time), and a small number who are really quite miserable. It’s probably about five to 10% that are really very happy, around 50% where the man is satisfied, and around 10 to 20% where the man is dissatisfied and another 10 to 20% of miserable married men.
I suspect that what happens is that men’s opinions of their own marriages slide along that scale quite a bit. At most times he’s satisfied. He never slides up to very happy. He occasionally slips to dissatisfied and sometimes to miserable. It’s where marriages stay in the dissatisfied realm that things start getting pretty bad. But most of the time, he is satisfied. Men who are dissatisfied to miserable and who stay married, do so primarily for two reasons: (1) for their children; and (2) to prevent financial ruin.
And something that most women just don’t grok about male views of marriage is just how important sex is to them. Men get married for two reasons: (1) to lock in a sex partner; and (2) to have children. That’s really it. Sex is integral and essential to marriage, at least for men. And a big part of a man’s satisfaction in marriage is how satisfied he is with his sex life.
#560 “There are more women who rate 6 than 8 according to a normal distribution.”
It depends how you slice it. If these are deciles then they are evenly distributed. I think the way people typically rate, it’s non-normally distributed with a plateau in the middle and wariness away from the edges (nobody wants to give out a 10 or a 0).
“Women are naturally attracted to good looking, confident & successful men. Only a small % of the male population mets those demands.”
You know, I have heard the 20/80 and the alpha/beta theories. I disagree. It would completely negate that there would be 80% female betas. When you look at it from the female prospect it would mean only 20% of females get commitment and the 80% of beta females get the pump-and-dump. Also I don’t like confident men. Most of the time in is a faux confidence game. I stated in my article nervousness is a sign of attraction. Attraction effects the whole nervous system. If a man is confident, cocky, or playing the fake asshole game I assume he is not attracted to me. Looks are also as they say “In the eye of of the beholder”. A man who is 5’0 would find a man who is 5’6 attractive. A man who is overweight would be better paired with an overweight gal. I think the manosphere is too obsessed with the Alpha theory in it kills any advantages a beta man would have with a beta woman.
#573
There’s no such creature as a “female beta”.
“A man who is 5’0 would find a man who is 5’6 attractive.”
Whoops, I meant a woman who is 5’0 would find a man who is 5’6 attractive.
Stephanie,
Please dont change the subject.
Women ( in general) are naturally attracted con good looking, confident and successful men. Only a small % of the male population meets those demands.
Yes, no, maybe?
“There’s no such creature as a “female beta”.”
Wait..wut? You have to be kidding me.
@YOHAMI
Ok, I will bit. Please define good looking, confident, and success.
Stephanie,
“Ok, I will bit. Please define good looking, confident, and success.”
Then bite, you can use your own definitions for those words.
Women ( in general) are naturally attracted con good looking, confident and successful men. Only a small % of the male population meets those demands.
Yes, no, maybe?
#577
No I’m not. Does it really have to be explained to you that there’s no such creature as a female beta? Lulz.
#575 ” a woman who is 5’0 would find a man who is 5’6 attractive”
That makes sense, therefore it doesn’t apply to women.
Seriously. Sadly. What you say is true is not true, even though it should be, because of how messed up women are. The 5’0″ woman still wants at least a 6’0″ man.
@YOHAMI
No I call, you show your hand first.
#577 re: female betas, or lack thereof. It helps to keep in mind the sexual hierarchy in the sexual marketplace. Alpha males are on top, and have women competing for them. Beta males are beneath women, and have to compete for women. The women are in-between.
@Hollenhund
If there is not beta female then how are their alpha males in the first place? An alpha needs a beta to have any importance.
“Alpha males are on top, and have women competing for them. Beta males are beneath women, and have to compete for women.”
What about alpha males chasing alpha females?
#573 “80% of beta females get the pump-and-dump”
Apex fallacy. almost all the pumping and dumping and uncommitting is (or was, another topic) by alpha males, because alpha males are the only ones who count. The incels and other guys from whom women don’t want commitment, who can’t hardly buy a date, aren’t exactly pumping much less dumping.
Stephanie:
EADR, you are engaging in bad faith debate and discussion tactics. You’re changing the subject, evading, redefining, raising strawmen, and pointing out red herrings.
Answer the question.
And no, there is no such thing as a female beta. If you’re referring to the so-called SMP female “losers” like overweight women and “nerdy” women, they are such by their own design. Most such women have turned away men who would be “good fits” for them.
#585 yes, other analyses include finer divisions which I consider silly. For example, Clooney didn’t *have* to chase, which is precisely what made his pursuing of Alamuddin so romantical.
“For example, Clooney didn’t *have* to chase, which is precisely what made his pursuing of Alamuddin so romantical.”
George Clooney is not exactly normal. He is a movie star worth millions. Not exactly a representation of the common male.
Stephanie:
Answer the question.
“Women ( in general) are naturally attracted to good looking, confident and successful men. Only a small % of the male population meets those demands.”
Do you agree or disagree?
#573 “Most of the time in is a faux confidence game. …I think the manosphere is too obsessed with the Alpha theory in it kills any advantages a beta man would have with a beta woman.”
Please hear us. The consensus of the manosphere is that women hate Game specifically because it makes it difficult for women to tell who is a Natural. And that women’s own brains twist things around to make it difficult for women to tell their own motivations. Nothing of what you are saying is doing anything except confirming what we think, to us. As to being obsessed, well, all I can say sex is an interesting topic to be obsessed about. Remember Stephen Hawking, with a useless body for over four decades, says he is obsessed with it.”
““Women ( in general) are naturally attracted to good looking, confident and successful men. Only a small % of the male population meets those demands.”
I disagree. I disagree further when you refuse to define those characteristics. The fact everyone is being ambiguous in the definitions is rather telling to me. If you are going to cling to this being true, please define the characteristics.
#589 you asked about a non-normal i.e. alpha male doing the chasing, so I provided, because I’m That Kind Of Guy.
“Please hear us. The consensus of the manosphere is that women hate Game specifically because it makes it difficult for women to tell who is a Natural.”
Women hate game because it is BORING. The Game came out, what, 12 years ago? Very few women are not familiar with its theories. Not to mention all the PUA hype of the 2000s. It is boring because it is unnatural and its followers never deviate from the game plan. This is why men are getting the brush off. There is not A+B+C= 100 percent success. The more you try, the more women are going to avoid.
Stephanie Shepard,
The terms alpha and beta have been borrowed from studies of animal behavior. Applying to humans is problematic as alphas have sexual access and betas don’t. So, by definition, human females can’t be alpha or beta since they are certain of sexual access.
Among wolves, only the alpha couple mates. The balance of the pack, both male and female, are considered beta.
Stephanie:
The fact that you won’t give a straight answer to a simple question is even more telling to me.
But, in the interest of moving this along, I’ll do this.
“Women ( in general) are naturally attracted con good looking, confident and successful men. Only a small % of the male population meets those demands.”
Work with these definitions:
“Good looking”: tall (6 ft or over). Masculine facial features (prominent brow ridge, thin lips, full head of hair, strong jaw, prominent Adam’s apple). Slender, toned, athletic body, with V-shaped torso.
Confident: easy charm, gets along with most people. Comfortable with himself and in his own skin. Is not arrogant, cocky, boorish or rude. Presents himself well and favorably to most.
Successful: Has a job or profession and wields a certain amount of power within it. Has achieved a level of proficiency in a few areas; a level of competence in others. Financially self-sufficient. Has been able to live life at least somewhat on his own terms.
Now. Answer the question.
Are most women going to naturally find such a man attractive? And will you agree that only a small number of men meet these criteria?
And Stephanie, don’t be disingenuous. You live in the United States. You know damn well what is meant by “confident”, “good looking” and “successful” in general in the sexual and marriage marketplaces. Come on. Be honest.
“Among wolves, only the alpha couple mates. The balance of the pack, both male and female, are considered beta.”
Wolves are not even similar to dogs, let alone humans. Dogs and wolves are the closest genetically but there is one very BIG difference between the two. Dogs can feel and recognize emotions. Wolves cannot. The whole idea wolves to be close to humans is ridiculous. Dogs themselves are different than wolves in the most important way, they have emotional intelligence.
“Are most women going to naturally find such a man attractive? And will you agree that only a small number of men meet these criteria?”
No, these men are boring. Like I really want to hear a guy talk about the women he has banged, his gym regime, or his stockbroker job.
I stated in my article nervousness is a sign of attraction. Attraction effects the whole nervous system. If a man is confident, cocky, or playing the fake asshole game I assume he is not attracted to me. Looks are also as they say “In the eye of of the beholder”. A man who is 5’0 would find a man who is 5’6 attractive. A man who is overweight would be better paired with an overweight gal. I think the manosphere is too obsessed with the Alpha theory in it kills any advantages a beta man would have with a beta woman.
Re “beta women” I agree they exist. An orange is still an an orange even if we call it a piddle-diddle. In my opinion, “beta women” are the women who basically invest zero effort in their physical appearance when going into the outer world. In other words, they tend to wear no make-up, don’t spend time on their hair, dress for “comfort” instead of style or to accentuate feminine features. They also tend to have zero ability to flirt and/or successfully engage in flirty banter type conversation.
There is a nervous aspect to attraction from the male POV, but the more successful a man is or has been, and the more self-aware he is of his value, the more he can sublimate that nervousness even around women he is highly attracted to. Part of the nervousness can be traced to the question “who is the prize here”. The default assumption in most interactions is the woman is the prize to be “won over” so the guy is nervous because he is trying to win her over. If the man views himself as the prize, there is no winning her over because it is her loss (this is the frame most men should bring or at least try to bring).
I understand your POV. From your perspective, it makes sense. Don’t take this the wrong way, but IIRC you are late 20s, early 30s, you are well past the phase where “hawt” men interest you as father potential. Your goal is to optimize on the most attractive man you can get who still will function as the stable drafthorse providing security.
The brilliant Yohami had a fascinating comment earlier that framed relationships as a price payer and price charger. There is some instructive utility in that model because we can then frame the ideal male and female “prices” for “goods received”.
The ideal to achieve from the female POV is the most attractive man possible who still operates from the frame of woman as prize and offers the most potential stability and security. Ideally, he would not have many other options or at least be fairly unaware of them. The overly confident man is a threat because that optionality always leaves the possibility of leaving the woman.
The ideal to achieve from the male POV is the hottest women possible who simultaneously is low maintenance in terms of resources, time, energy, etc that must be spent keeping her happy and satisfied. Generally speaking, the hotter the woman, the more entitled she will feel to “more” of your time, attention, resources spent, etc.
This actually ties back to a concept of Dr. Jeremy’s of relationships as fair value exchanges. In a perfectly fair relationship, a fair price is being charged on both sides, and no one is trying to charge a higher price just because they have the market power to do so. The problem is the default assumption flows only one way. I’ll give a perfect example. Giggles drones on and on an on endlessly about how much the male in the relationship has to deliver on emotional intimacy and satisfying the woman’s emotional needs, but apparently the simple desire for a woman to look sexy for her man such as put on some makeup is a ridiculous over the top request. For many, it is ALL about the woman’s needs, particularly emotional, while the man’s sexual needs and tastes are deemed irrelevant. In other words, the man must pay and pay and pay various prices while the woman doesn’t pay anything by simple virtue of the fact that she is the woman in the relationship.
” Giggles drones on and on an on endlessly about how much the male in the relationship has to deliver on emotional intimacy and satisfying the woman’s emotional needs, but apparently the simple desire for a woman to look sexy for her man such as put on some makeup is a ridiculous over the top request. ”
If a man is not delivering emotional intimacy and satisfying the woman’s emotional needs than what incentive does she have to be with a man? What worth does an emotionally vacant man have to a woman? ZERO worth. If a man does not fulfill my emotional needs I have no use for him at all.
It is boring because it is unnatural and its followers never deviate from the game plan.
The best Game is not following a script, but it is a certain demeanor, behavior, body language, vocal inflection, etc. I’m not sure if women really believe it, or it is just a disingenuous debating tactic but “Game” isn’t the caricature some women present it to be. Sure, some guys do that, and that is bad Game. Still, following the script is going to be 100x better than “Just be Yourself” for the vast majority of guys. For the vast majority of guys “just be yourself” is a great recipe for rosie palm and her five sisters.
“ No, these men are boring. Like I really want to hear a guy talk about the women he has banged, his gym regime, or his stockbroker job.”
Bullshit.
First, you know damn well what passes for a “confident”, “good looking” and “successful” man in the North American SMP/MMP. No one here should have to define it for you, despite my having done so.
Second, what YOU think is boring or attractive is irrelevant. I want you to answer whether that man I described is attractive to women IN GENERAL in the North American SMP/MMP.
Third, you’re being dishonest and disingenuous. You know damn well that the confident, good looking and successful man is attractive to MOST women. Your refusal to admit this simple fact that everyone KNOWS is true tells me what I need to know. You won’t engage in honest discussion.
“Third, you’re being dishonest and disingenuous. You know damn well that the confident, good looking and successful man is attractive to MOST women. Your refusal to admit this simple fact that everyone KNOWS is true tells me what I need to know. You won’t engage in honest discussion.”
Nope, these men are boring. I am more interested in a man who is good at conversation and is funny. Dating and relationships are meant to be playful not so damn serious. I cannot stand a man who takes himself to serious. These “winners” you are describing are exhausting to be around. The ego alone demands too much maintanence without return.
What the….
Stephanie, a few thoughts on 573:
This is not true. The distribtuion of male status does not directly have a bearing on the distribution of female status. This is like me saying the United States is an extremely unequal nation, and you saying that doesn’t take into account Japanese income inequality.
Well no duh.
Women are the in-demand sex, men are not. Women are more discerning and picky. The 80-20 refers to the 20% of men who can relatively easily clear women’s attraction threshold. Empirically this appears to be accurate, though obviously women do not HAVE to follow this…they COULD be assortative. In practice, they are not.
This has no relation at all to women. Women also have a 20-80 barrier, but the whole distribution is so much higher that the incentives are all distorted.
No definitely not. 20-80% North Korea means 80% starve and crap in buckets. 20-80% in the US refers to whether you get a new car every few years or not.
Nope, because it’s not necessarily a function of female-to-male height. Men are competing against EACH OTHER. In North Korea, you need to bring your bucket to crap in, that’s your provider game. in the United States, you need to bring your new car.
If you are 5’6 and all the men around you are 5’3, you’re gold. If you’re 5’11 and all the men around you are 6’7, you are doomed.
Why? They don’t want to the same things. Hey AOL, my name is Time Warner, we’re both big companies, why don’t we get married?
Worst merger ever.
Ahahahahahaha….
Stephanie,
It’s not a trap question, it’s just a question. Answer please.
“Nope, these men are boring. I am more interested in a man who is good at conversation and is funny. Dating and relationships are meant to be playful not so damn serious. I cannot stand a man who takes himself to serious. These “winners” you are describing are exhausting to be around. The ego alone demands too much maintanence without return.”
Some might call this “solipsism”.
Step outside yourself and take a look at the world around you. Observe the men who actually have sexual and relationship success. Observe the types of men who are considered conventionally attractive. Leave aside your personal biases and preferences, and observe what is actually happening in the world at large, not just in your little corner of it.
Stephanie,
“George Clooney is not exactly normal. He is a movie star worth millions. Not exactly a representation of the common male.”
Precisely. So?
iStephanie Shepard,
Bringing in dogs and wolves is derailing the conversation. Anyway, since they can interbreed, by definition, they are of the same species. Mankind’s greatest achievement may well be the domestication of wolves into dogs. They differ behaviorally because dogs have adapted to the human “pack”.
I”ll take your silence on the issue of human female betas as assent. Among animals using the tournament social model, there are no female betas but, that doesn’t discount that there is a heirarchy in the female herd.
#597 Most canids are naturally quite monogamous and cooperative in mating and providing for offspring, and latch from courting during proestrous (prior to coming into heat) to post-weaning.
Small wolf packs are very antisocial of outsiders and tend to be pretty strictly revolving around the lone alpha female. Courting may help her once-a-year ovulation. Mating doesn’t really occur with beta females, but a beta male, usually a litter mate of the alpha male, often mates with the alpha female if the alpha male exhibits disinterest. In larger packs multiple females can go intro estrus, but larger packs are often fragmented by couples going off to form another pack.
Dogs tend to ovulate twice-a-year, and are much more social towards outsiders, and indiscriminate in mating. A female in heat often humps inanimate objects. But yes they have been selected by humans for emotional intelligence, including communicating with faux eyebrows.
Stephanie,
“I disagree.”
With what exactly? do you mean that women are attracted to the vast majority of non good looking, not confident and not successful men?
@YOHAMI
I am no longer responding to you. If you are going to circle around my original question of defining good looking, confidence, or success then we are at a stalemate.
@Stephanie 594:
“Women hate game because it is BORING. The Game came out, what, 12 years ago? Very few women are not familiar with its theories. Not to mention all the PUA hype of the 2000s.”
Haha. Come on. The type of stuff you read about in “The Game” is really cringe-worthy if you’ve ever seen it in real life. It hasn’t passed for “good game” in years, and it never, ever was the gold standard for game- mostly just training wheels for guys who started from a place of being seriously socially inept. Don’t equate this to what qualifies as good game in 2014 as if even the technical side of what those guys teach has never evolved (it totally has), nor to what constitutes good game in the abstract, natural sense.
The best “game” is being confident- socially skilled, attractive- fit, well dressed, AND socially skilled, and successful- the leader and well-connected in SOME sphere of influence that women can understand and appreciate. It’s not a collection of lines or routines, although that worked for a certain group of guys hitting on divas in LA a decade ago.
In my experience, everyone finds someone who tries to fake being cool, weird. Women LIKE good game, and they respond to it. A good few of us here can attest to that and have never been PUAs as you would describe them. What women don’t like, is being engaged by anyone that could be a faker as they would determine it. It’s clear here you don’t really have as much of an idea of what the playing field or the tactics really look like or what they require from a male perspective, as you may think you do.
Stephanie,
“No, these men are boring.”
The question is not what YOU like, the question is what women in general like. If this was about you I would be asking you if you’re attracted to the good looking, confident, successful kind. Im not.
Please answer the question.
Yohami, Morpheus, ADBG, Fuzzie:
Stephanie won’t engage in good faith discussion. She won’t acknowledge what is glaringly obvious. It’s like a science student who says there is no such thing as gravity.
We don’t even live in the same worlds; we don’t have the same frames of reference on which to continue a discussion. I say something is generally true; she says no it isn’t because I don’t agree with it. I say generally, she says no, because of my own personal experience.
This is patently absurd. I’m off this discussion. NO further point to it.
#600 “If a man is not delivering emotional intimacy and satisfying the woman’s emotional needs than what incentive does she have to be with a man?”
One of the reasons it seems we’re talking past each other is because, not being condescending here, we know what you mean rather than what you say. We’ve been there, most of us have spent out whole lives there, as that guy who a woman uses to satisfy her emotional needs. It’s a role that is better filled by a girlfriend than a boyfriend.
Boyfriends are better used to provide boyfriend stuff.
@YOHAMI
Bugger off.
@Deti
I don’t agree with you. Accept it and move on.
@Morpheus
Unfortunately, a lot of men never got the memo about PUA being out of date. Many men still use it and it is very cringe worthy. The idea a woman is suppose to chase a man? Ugh…
Sorry, I meant Jake instead of Morpheus.
Stephanie,
“I am no longer responding to you. If you are going to circle around my original question of defining good looking, confidence, or success then we are at a stalemate.”
Deti took the unnecessary work to phrase the obvious. You already had that information.
Post data, you’re obtuse.
Stephanie,
“Bugger off.”
Make me.
Steph:
It’s not disagreement; it’s your refusal to engage in good faith discussion. I’ve accepted that you won’t deal with topics honestly and that you won’t engage this site and it’s commenters in good faith.
Deti,
“Stephanie won’t engage in good faith discussion. She won’t acknowledge what is glaringly obvious.”
She’s a troll.
“One of the reasons it seems we’re talking past each other is because, not being condescending here, we know what you mean rather than what you say. We’ve been there, most of us have spent out whole lives there, as that guy who a woman uses to satisfy her emotional needs. It’s a role that is better filled by a girlfriend than a boyfriend.”
No I meant it exactly how I said it. I have zero need for an emotionally vacant man. If my emotional needs and emotional intimacy is not being met, I have no use for him. AT ALL. Only lesbians what to be emotionally fulfilled by a woman.
Please tell me, If a man is not filling a woman’s emotional needs what use is he?
Stephanie
Good looking – Google Chris Hemsworth or Henry Cavill,
Successful – Well known neurosurgeon vs. high school janitor
@Morpheus
So to be in that top 20% you have to be a neurosurgeon who looks like Chris Hemsworth? Gotcha.
#623 IF (that’s a big if, if you can’t tell) a woman’s emotional needs are fulfillable by a man, then those needs are fulfillable by a lunkhead who thought a blender for her birthday was a great gift because she mentioned she like margaritas the last time they went out for a real dinner, without the kids, going on three months ago now.
Otherwise her needs are not fulfillable by a man, and her “emotional needs” are actually a need to gossip with changing cliques of several women friends.
Stephanie already knows, she said:
“George Clooney is not exactly normal. He is a movie star worth millions. Not exactly a representation of the common male.”
So special rules apply to exceptional men. Do I have to ask if women are generally attracted to exceptional men?
What level of retardness are we running now?
If a man is not delivering emotional intimacy and satisfying the woman’s emotional needs than what incentive does she have to be with a man? What worth does an emotionally vacant man have to a woman? ZERO worth. If a man does not fulfill my emotional needs I have no use for him at all.
Interesting response. I wasn’t arguing that a man should NOT deliver emotional intimacy or satisfy emotional needs. What I was arguing was that a fair exchange also means a man’s needs get satisfied as well. Many women will discuss their emotional needs, and in the very next breath trivialize or marginalize male needs. Which is a great example of solipsism because from the female POV only her needs are valid, male needs can be dismissed as abnormal or dysfunctional. I’m always amazed by the women who appear to be arguing that a woman has absolutely no need whatsoever to try and look sexy for her man.
And we haven’t even touched on what is meant by “emotional intimacy” and “emotional needs”. You appear to be having trouble defining fairly simple straightforward things like good-looking, successful. The terms emotional intimacy and emotional needs have far more ambiguity because of the expectations embedded in those terms. I completely agree with a man providing emotional intimacy to his partner or wife, but that doesn’t mean indulging volatile emotional states or moods, or coddling emotional states that resemble a toddler throwing a tantrum because he didn’t get a candy bar.
@jf12
You are avoiding it. A man who is not fulfilling a woman’s emotionally needs are useless to a woman. I don’t know how this can be confusing. There is a reason the dopey husband Ray Ramano was prevalent in entertainment.
#623 Another reason it seems to you that we’re talking about women in general instead of you in particular is because, frankly, you’re a woman hence not that different from women in general. EVERY other woman claims to prefer nerd men, contrary to every nerd man’s experience. EVERY other woman claims to prefer for a sexual partner a boyfriend who will hold her hand and listen to her cry for hours about how she felt that one time in 8th grade when that one boy made her feel like she was dirty for wanting to … never mind …, contrary to every friendzoned man’s experience.
That’s what we’re saying. We understand where you’re coming from, which is the position of not giving us credit for our experiences.
#628 you’ll notice I haven’t demanded your definition of fulfilling emotional needs. I know you want us to want to know so you want us to tell you to tell us, but truthfully one reason we don’t care is because we already do know. As evidenced by the preceding sentence itself.
Dogs are emotionally intelligent, aren’t they? Not changing the subject, merely disparaging the idea that it’s at all rare.
“Please tell me, If a man is not filling a woman’s emotional needs what use is he?”
And there you have it. According to this woman, Stephanie Shepard, a man’s highest and best “use” is to fill a woman’s emotional needs. Otherwise, he’s useless. A man’s wants, needs, hopes, desires and dreams are completely irrelevant.
One could not ask for more convincing evidence of the feminine imperative. And from the horse’s mouth.
Thank you, SS.
“And we haven’t even touched on what is meant by “emotional intimacy” and “emotional needs”.”
It is not easy to define, but seems very easy to trivialize. An example: women are worriers. You would not believe how much a woman worries. Most men tend to marginalize or trivialize when a woman worries. How many men hear have brushed of a woman’s worries as unimportant? Or as a mood swing? Or as “that time of the month”?
@Morpheus
So to be in that top 20% you have to be a neurosurgeon who looks like Chris Hemsworth? Gotcha.
Stephanie,
I initially thought you were reasonable, but I am quickly losing patience with you. I am NOT going to play Aunt Giggle games with you where I make one point, and you respond to some imagined point or make some non-sequitur statement. I made no point about the top 20%. You appear to be having difficulty with what the words good-looking and successful mean. I gave you examples to help you. Those two are examples of very good-looking in terms of face and body. A neurosurgeon is successful, a high school janitor is not. There are NUMEROUS gradations in between those extremes. A neurosurgeon is in the top .5 to .1% of successful men. Those two men are probably in the top .1% of good looking men.
Please cut out the BS word games. Don’t take a comment I make and respond to me as if I said something else or made some other claim or point.
#627 ” I completely agree with a man providing emotional intimacy to his partner or wife, but that doesn’t mean indulging volatile emotional states or moods, or coddling emotional states that resemble a toddler throwing a tantrum because he didn’t get a candy bar.”
It doesn’t? Are you sure?
“And from the horse’s mouth.”
Dont insult horses.
“Please tell me, If a man is not filling a woman’s emotional needs what use is he?”
Lets translate her horror: If a woman is not giving sexual pleasure to a man what use is she?
Stephanie, define “emotional”, “needs”, “use”, and carefully explain why a man should give a damn about it. Also explain why you see men as toys. And how you plan to make amends.
An example: women are worriers. You would not believe how much a woman worries. Most men tend to marginalize or trivialize when a woman worries. How many men hear have brushed of a woman’s worries as unimportant? Or as a mood swing? Or as “that time of the month”?
FWIW, I want a relationship with a grown-up/adult, not a pseudo-child. I expect to have to tell a 5-year old there are no bogeyman under the bed or inside the closet. I hold grown women to a bit of a higher standard.
#632 “You would not believe how much a woman worries. Most men tend to marginalize or trivialize when a woman worries.”
Men do believe “how much” and THEREFORE “marginalize”; it’s the correct rational response. That’s why girlfriends suit that purpose better, because women are so much better at pretending senseless nattering is important.
It doesn’t? Are you sure?
It doesn’t for me. I’ll call that stuff out.
Here’s a manly way of responding to irrational worries: STOP THAT! WE HAVE A JOB TO DO HERE!
#636 ” I hold grown women to a bit of a higher standard.”
I keep planning to, sometime, when I meet one, sometime.
I am glad you just proved my point about women’s emotional needs. You are disgusting. I’m out…
And you’re a pig. Goodbye.
Stephanie:
What, if anything, do you think a woman needs to bring to a relationship with a man?
To make it simple for your solipsistic worldview, I’ll ask it this way:
What do you feel you bring to a relationship with a man?
Do you believe a man deserves anything from you other than your presence in his life?
Do you believe you need to do or be anything to make a relationship with you worth a man’s while?
Re: grown women. Having lived in the middle of women all my life, the same need for drama that teen girls manifest most, er, dramatically, persists until that teen girl dies of old age. It never goes away. The drama, along with other things, may become less fluid and more ossified, but it is the same need for drama.
Therefore, for a man to avoid being sucked into a girlfriend role as her mirror or sink or other parts of her solipsistic vanity, the emotionally intelligent boy role is feeding a woman’s emotional needs by helping her create new drama. Bust through her mirror and clog up her sink. DO NOT listen to gossip about other women from her. Instead, invent gossip about you and her so that she can talk about you and her to her girlfriends.
Strephanie Shepard,
In the past, I have fulfilled a woman’s emotional needs. The problem was that it was from the confines of the dreaded “freind zone”. What you asking for is the highest level of acceptance from a man. Time on this little corner of the internet has taught me that, should I be too free with emotional intimacy, it boils down to the male version of a slut.
Boys have to be careful with this. Please, don’t make light of it.
@Stephanie:
“The idea a woman is suppose to chase a man? Ugh…”
Apparently a lot of women haven’t gotten the memo about this. Because this is ultimately what starts happening when you start presenting as confident, attractive, and successful with the options to back it up. Lots of women are chasing after guys they view as a cut above where they are (whether it’s objectively true or not). It’s not just an idea, it’s what starts to happen when you get closer to that top 20% in whatever pond you fish in.
IMPORTANT – PLEASE STOP AND READ.
I think it’s important for me to step in at this point and ask everyone to just ttake a step back while I do this. Please work with me here, fellas.
This guest post by Ms. Stephanie Shepard, has been among the most successful in J4G history – something I suspected would happen, because I see Ms. Stephanie as a sharp young lady. That doesn’t men that I agree with everything she writes; I most certainly do not. But I appreicate her ppluck and willingness to be heard and get involved iin good faith back and forth with her readers.
Having said that, I am also deeply impressed and proud of our regular readers and commenters. You have all acquitted yourselves well and stand as objective proof that the Manosphere is not some foaming at the mouth asylum some would to have others believe.
So, I would just like to ask everyone to PLEASE stop comment for a moment, read this, and respond in this fashion:
Exactly what “beefs” do you have with Ms. Stephanie’s article, or her comments in this discussion? Please make them as concise as possible. Please do not post more than once. We aare trying to bring more light than heat here, and I have faith in you fellas to be able to do it on the honor system.
From now until midnight EDT, everyone will have ONE post with which to clearly layout their disagreements with anything Ms. Stephanie has said. Again, please be concise. I want us to focus on precisely what the disagreements are, so that they can be properly and productively addressed.
Thanks too everyone for their cooperation.
O.
@ Stephanie
Except for all the short women who want 6’+ guys because they want to feel “protected” or have tall offspring…
I am glad you just proved my point about women’s emotional needs. You are disgusting. I’m out…
Ha. I’m assuming that is directed at me.
Observe. Here we have a pretty strong insult simply because I am not willing to assert full support for a “woman’s emotional needs” before we’ve even attempted to even begin to define what that means. From Stephanie’s previous comments, we could possible interpret that means reassurance for whatever irrational worries a woman may experience since they are “natural worriers”.
I’d add that response shows I clearly hit a hot button. Women appear to be very sensitive to accusations of irrational emotionality. That is something to be aware of and put in your back pocket.
Obsidian,
I suggest we have Susan Walsh do a guest post and invite a few gals from feministing to the comment section. That would do for F4G everything Stephanie can do and more.
Morph,
“Ha. I’m assuming that is directed at me.”
I assumed that was directed to fj12, but who knows. Next.
I lost track of the core arguments being made in the thread. As best as I can tell, we have:
Proposition 1. Stephanie’s thesis is that a strategy of reciprocal interest/attraction signals (“TFT”) from the female and reactive side may help the market clear more efficiently. It may also help women to encourage men who are attractive to them without risking a humiliating rejection, and this may also lower the risk for men who require escalating pre-contact invitations in order to muster the courage to make the final approach.
I think that’s a perfectly reasonable position.
Proposition 2. “The SMP is not fair. Some guys are enjoying sexual abundance and others are generally not, and that a mating system which allows for longer time periods of experimentation/pre-marital sex will probably serve to amplify these imbalances.”
I think this is perfectly reasonable as well.
-Issue…? Will the female “tit for tat” strategy as expressed in Prop 1 exacerbate the social “injustice” described in Proposition 2? My guess is that the answer is yes, but it appears that Stephanie looks specifically for emotional support in her mating preferences and thus she may be willing to make various trade-offs that would value an emotionally-available/high-intimacy male over a maniacally-driven alpha who expects an extremely emotionally-self-reliant female.
Here might be one q for Stephanie, assuming that she is still available for comment: do you feel, given your experience in and around the bar scene, that you can detect one of these more emotionally-fulfilling men at a distance, and then begin the TFT dance having pre-screened for this?
Just to add local color with some scenarios:
1. Hot guy, built, handsome, etc. by himself vs. same guy out with a group of buddies. Go for the loner? Look for and de-select guys who exhibit, say, high-fiving, hard-drinking “Bro” behavior?
2. Coffee shop vs. wine bar vs. night club? Should women push for venue selection prior to TFT…?
3. Bohemian clothing (scarf, t-shirt, beanie, boots, cargos) vs. tailored jacket and dress shirt…? Would the “money” look that attracts some women turn you off because of higher probability of ego and/or emotional unavailability? Or is the guy’s clothing a less accurate signal?
Basically I am just curious about how you combine your use of TFT with your preference for emotionally-available men, and wondering if you find that there are “tells” on display which help you to avoid showing reciprocal interest and inviting approach from men who will turn out to emotionally unavailable.
#647 “Please do not post more than once.”
I’ll have to use just one finger then.
My main disagreement
1) That women, including Ms. Stephanie, know what works for men interacting with women, and can say it.
For example, I think, in what I think is a rather rational and obvious in hindsight way, that hypergamy blinds women to the fact of hypergamy. And so, a woman denying hypergamy is to me evidence of hypergamy, but she wants her denial to be dealt with as though her denial is evidence of non-hypergamy.
For another example, we know that women don’t want unNaturals becoming successful with women. It’s more than a gut feeling we have, and it’s one of the reasons that one aspect of Game is to make it smooth, covert. There is a lot of great discussion we could have with Ms. Shephard based just on this one aspect of attraction – well executed covertness. It’s a simple concept, really, but admitting understanding it is tantamount to admitting knowing that Game works.
For an undiscussed example, my knowing she is sharp makes me want to discuss my theory of attraction based on a conspiracy to exclude others, but obviously I can’t do that if she wants to pretend men don’t know what works.
Stephanie says:
If a man is not delivering emotional intimacy and satisfying the woman’s emotional needs than what incentive does she have to be with a man? What worth does an emotionally vacant man have to a woman? ZERO worth.
And I have to agree with Stephanie on this one. To support my agreement, here’s a quote from Deti at #598, which eloquently summarizes the satisfying of emotional needs that BV does to maintain his rotation of apex females:
BV gives these women the things they absolutely crave, what they need like they need to breathe air; and that they cannot get anywhere else: Attention, validation and affirmation of their worth as women, as sexual creatures. Most men don’t understand they need this. BV does, and he gives it to them. He makes them feel pretty, wanted, special, and that they’re not sluts or bad people (even though some of them probably were sluts and some probably are bad people). He reminds them of their younger days when they were prettier, less jaded, more wide-eyed and innocent, less experienced in the ways of the world’s dark underbelly ugliness, and still believed in all that can be good about relationships. In return, they give him sex and companionship.
#651 “I assumed that was directed to fj12, but who knows.”
I didn’t; I thought you were the designated disguster. Unless … unless .. there WAS one time in 8th grade …
#654 “Attention, validation and affirmation of their worth as women, as sexual creatures.”
Correct. But this is not what women think they want as emotional needs.
@deti 631;
And there you have it. According to this woman, Stephanie Shepard, a man’s highest and best “use” is to fill a woman’s emotional needs.
By and large, man’s highest and best use is still provisioning. His willingness to attend to her emotional needs is just confirmation that he can be relied up to continue fulfilling his provisioning duties.
It’s only a subset of contemporary women who find emotionally vacant men worthless because they have other means of provisioning.
@O 647:
I have no “beef” with Stephanie. Her position on TFT is totally valid for women, but would only work for men in a really controlled environment. Anyone who’s actually been out there can attest to the complications that would overwhelm such a simple strategy for a man. The first thought that rolled through my head after finishing the article was “this is going to get torn to shreds in the comments”. It could be a case of right article wrong audience, because it really shows only a basic knowledge of what the game is practically like for a man, which is probably why everyone’s dog piling on her. If someone is going to be a contributor here you would think they’d . Also, “hypergamy is not real”?
Frankly, it’s started to feel like we’re talking to someone who’s still got one foot in the matrix. I would have expected a bit more from someone brought in to be a contributor here, no offense to the site nor Stephanie.
Obsidian:
Here is my one comment.
Stephanie will not engage in good faith, honest discussion. She asserts that she doesn’t believe most women are hypergamous. In other words, she doesn’t believe most women seek out and try to extract commitment from the highest status, most attractive man she can find. That’s a ridiculous statement. I expected her to defend it. Yohami asked a question designed to suss out whether she could defend it. I refined the question further. She responded with nonresponsive answers about her own personal views. She then continued in bad faith, raising strawmen and nonsequiturs in response to Morpheus.
Her debating and discussion tactics are dishonest and disingenuous. They consist of deflection, evasion, refusal to defend her claims even with anecdote, strawmen, and red herrings. It’s not possible to have a discussion with such an individual. Her only usefulness is as a demonstration of the feminine imperative when she says that men are of no use unless they are filling her emotional needs.
@jf12;
Correct. But this is not what women think they want as emotional needs.
I think it is. Not in so many word, perhaps. But if you examined the behaviors that women want from a man, most of them would fit neatly under one of these four things: “Attention, validation and affirmation of their worth as women, as sexual creatures.” One caveat – not all the attention, validation, and affirmation that women want are directly sexual.
#658 the tearing to shreds produced at least this one nugget in the, uh, excreta:
“TFT just becomes Tinder for Good Girls.” A fine emotionally intelligent thought wrapped in a timely and exciting albeit scary analogy, which should have been girl crack if she were willing to pursue it.
I for one think tearing to shreds is often a good thing.
@ Obsidian 647,
So, I would just like to ask everyone to PLEASE stop comment for a moment, read this, and respond in this fashion:
Whoops. Missed that.
I think Stephanie’s TFT idea is fine as far as it goes. It’s desirable to have a partner who is interacting and helping escalate, rather than being totally passive. Just like in bed.
Where it doesn’t go is an honest examination of the asymmetries and inequalities in the mating process. The man has to meet the woman’s attraction threshold before any TFT commences. Most of the burden of initiation, most of the risk, and most of the costs – monetary and emotional – are still born by the man. The TFT description hides these behind a facade of equal investment.
That said, I am all for encouraging women to engage in TFT, because the more of the burden they are willing to bear, the easier it is for the guys.
Now, for the subsequent discussion. I was not engaged in any direct exchange with Stephanie, but what I read wasn’t going well. She and the men here were largely talking at cross purposes. They wanted to talk in generalities; she wanted to talk about her own experience. They wanted to impose their schema on the discussion; she didn’t cooperate, but didn’t provide an alternative either. Neither side agreed on terminology or assumptions. Neither side was forthcoming with evidence to support their position. All in all, a rather a poor show all around.
I did agree with some of the things she said in the comments, including this: “If a man is not delivering emotional intimacy …”. Yes, of course. I think most men who are successful with relationships with women that last more than a night or two are cognizant of the emotional needs of women. It’s part of the package. Also this: “women are worriers”. I recently read a whole book about that. It’s true, it’s an evolved survival instinct of our species, and there’s no point dismissing it. Women can’t help worry any more than men can stop looking at breasts. It’s part of the package.
I don’t think anyone here is overlooking women’s emotional needs in a relationship.
Morpheus can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems the reason he brought that up was to illustrate the hypocrasy of women constantly championing their need for emotional intimacy and availability, while completely discounting men’s needs for sexual attractiveness and availability.
Woman requests more emotional intimacy = she’s not getting what she deserves. Man is a pig.
Man makes reasonable request more sexual attractiveness = Man is a shallow pig, and has no right to suggest what she does with her appearance.
I think most here would agree that both “needs” are equally valid, yet our feminist culture only respects the feminine side.
I don’t think anyone here is overlooking women’s emotional needs in a relationship.
Morpheus can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems the reason he brought that up was to illustrate the hypocrasy of women constantly championing their need for emotional intimacy and availability, while completely discounting men’s needs for sexual attractiveness and availability.
Jimmy, EXACTLY RIGHT! It is the double standard and hypocrisy.
As we see from Stephanie, women will issue statements about their unqualified access to emotional intimacy and needs on the terms they dictate, yet simultaneously argue a man has no right to his own set of needs. A man might prefer a certain look or visual presentation to maximize his sexual enjoyment. Some woman’s position appears to be…well…fuck that…you should be glad to have me with my hair looking like a bird’s nest and sweatpants and a sports t-shirt. Actually making an effort to look sexy? Fuck that. You should just be happy you have access to a vagina. That seems to be the attitude of some.
And again, we still haven’t defined emotional intimacy and emotional needs. We already see the confusion. Ciaran is apparently interpreting that to mean validation as sexually attractive. I mean…fuck…we went round and round and round trying to define obvious shit like good looking and succesful. I have yet to have anyone give me a functional definition of emotional intimacy or provide examples to know what we are talking about.
My other potential issue is that becomes a way for a woman to potentially demand you indulging her negative emotional states, when on some occasions the right response is going to be not to indulge or feed into it, but basically say “cut that shit out now”.
In my first major LTR and marriage, I was far too indulgent of her various emotional states. Now she was probably BPD, but I still tolerated way too much. I’ve learned from that. I still try to be emotionally supportive when the circumstances dictate, but I won’t indulge everything.
By and large, man’s highest and best use is still provisioning. His willingness to attend to her emotional needs is just confirmation that he can be relied up to continue fulfilling his provisioning duties.
This is certainly one way to look at it, and it is a viable strategy. I will say though it doesn’t really fit with the “sovereign” man model which I think a man is focusing on different “uses”
Ciaran, I am impressed with your commentary and ability to dissect both sides.
666, the number of the beast.
something I suspected would happen, because I see Ms. Stephanie as a sharp young lady.
For the record, I agree. I’ve read some of her economic stuff and as someone with a strong background in econ and finance (invoking credentialism haha) I’ve been impressed with some minor quibbles (there are some errors in her understanding of the monetary/credit system).
That said, in my view some of the “rules of the road” here are to realize we don’t do “tone” here…discussion can get intense so you have to put on your big boy and big girl pants. That said, direct personal attacks and insults won’t be tolerated. I delete any comments that come to my attention that attack anyone either male or female…no bias on that one. Lastly, it is frustrating if someone debates with deflection and goalpost moving constantly responding to something other than the previous point raised.
This isn’t tea and crumpets in the living room, it is beers in the game room.
@Morpheus 665,
This is certainly one way to look at it, and it is a viable strategy. I will say though it doesn’t really fit with the “sovereign” man model which I think a man is focusing on different “uses”
I didn’t make clear I was presenting that from the female perspective, where a man’s emotional attentiveness is of import because it signifies his productive intentiveness. Of course from the masculine perspective, men have other value.
@ OffTheCuff ,
Thank you.
“there are some errors in her understanding of the monetary/credit system”
@Morpheus
Please tell me the absolutes of the monetary/credit system at the moment. Then I will concede to an error of misunderstanding. While the FED continues to change the rules of accounting so must our understanding of the markets. Hell 10 years nobody would have ever thought of the Bailout nor the 9 trillion the fed pumped into the international banks.
@Morpheus
Please tell me the absolutes of the monetary/credit system at the moment. Then I will concede to an error of misunderstanding.
I don’t have time at the moment, but when I do I’ll go back and find the post I was thinking about…I think it was on your site address you had listed on HUS. I’ll also go back and watch your youtube video again. I remember watching it sometime ago and being impressed overall but noting some technical errors.
In the meantime, I’d suggest you download and read this paper from Cullen Roche.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
The youtube video was deleted when I deleted my former website. To be frank I am not sure what is left over from that site seeing as I deleted all accounts associated with it. I don’t really remember having any links to youtube on HUS. Ah, it is all a blur now.
Ciaran:
Are you suggesting that I or someone else needed to present evidence for the proposition that there is such a thing as hypergamy and that every woman exercises it?
That’s ludicrous.
That’s like an entry level science student demanding that hisphtsic professor produce scientific studies proving the existence of gravity. It’s just silly , really.
That’s like an entry-level science student demanding that his physics professor produce scientific studies proving the existence of gravity. That’s silly, really.
#626
#453
SS: “Women hate game because it is boring”
Really… Hmm.
julie: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5319430?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
Me: My wife isn’t allowed to read or write, so how can she write a “note”? Can I bring in a video? [Kayla likes this]
Julie: that’s acceptable…she can skype in her approval as well
Me: On second thought, my girlfriend has better taste in colors.
Julie: so long as its a woman you should be fine
Jacqueline: LOL OTC….I like you.
Easy peasy. No manipulation or whatever, just having fun with the correct attitude.
As Obsidian has limited responses to the singular, here’s mine.
I think TFT used to be “de riguer” in the past. Eye contact to establish interest does not sound like a novel concept to this silly old bear. It’s a shame that a lot of useful social conventions have gone by the wayside.
As for Stephanie’s comments, I’ll defer to Deti. That does leave the question of motivation. To that I’ll go way out on a limb and say that she is single and bereft of an emotionally available man. To take this line of thought a step further, could it be that this SMP/MMP has crushed so many men that they lock up their hearts?
As one who wears his on his sleeve, it hasn’t done me much good.
Stephanie,
I did go to your page and checked your thumbnail. You’re good looking. Considering where you’re located, have you thought about re-enactment events? I understand they’re very social and who knows what could happen?
If I’m off base, here’s a peace offering
@Deti 674,
Are you suggesting that I or someone else needed to present evidence for the proposition that there is such a thing as hypergamy and that every woman exercises it?
Needed to? No. Could have? Yes. There are certainly plenty of sources that could be referenced. (Except for the “every woman” bit. It’s nearly impossible to support an every claim outside of mathematics.)
Though I suppose you might regard that like referencing the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. It’s axiomatic in this context. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women are created hypergamous …” /jk
That’s like an entry-level science student demanding that his physics professor produce scientific studies proving the existence of gravity. That’s silly, really.
I remember in freshman physics one student was convinced that gravity didn’t exist in a vacuum. That was silly.
@Obsidian, Ciaran & all
Re: “both sides making a poor (or good) showing”
I’m really going to sound like a hater, but fuck it. The problem with a lot of the female dialog we read as men regarding the SMP just about anywhere on the web is that it rarely seems to add any new information with regards to what men who have any substantial real-world experience with game already know. Stephanie’s post comes entirely from the perspective of a woman, which is fine unto itself, but to any of us with any applied knowledge is obviously not nuanced enough to really pass muster in a whole slew of potential situations that I guarantee you will face if you try to put it into practice as your staple strategy as a man. So the instinct here is going to be to shoot it full of holes, because objectively, it’s really, really basic in the scope of what we know. But according to the author, it’s prime use is in a bar? Maybe if you’re a girl. Put simply, the problem is that a lot of times, it really seems like there are certain women who are trying to repackage or even unlearn us of what experience has already taught us, but they’re doing it from a place of being not very self-aware and from a really insulated social perspective. I totally understand why they do so, but one has to wonder why these ideas are being held up as new or super informative on a site for guys that are generally pretty aware of the forest AND the trees.
I could go on and on. A lot of the female dialog we’ve seen regarding some of the basic ideas that have been tested in real life and form the basis for how you should approach dating lately seem to just nitpick and try to spin things that have already been hashed out through the experience of many guys. For example, a woman will claim that there’s little truth to the 80/20 rule and point to studies of people surveyed by self-reporting. Of course, let’s ignore the obvious problems with asking someone who has reason to conceal the truth about something that cuts to the heart of their ability to claim value. If you go out into the world and test for yourself, you will find that girls are pretty much throwing themselves at guys higher on the totem pole (whether that is in the hopes of a relationship or just for fun, or just a “mistake”), choosing that segment of men when they want flings (“mistakes” or “harmless fun” depending on who’s asking), and in general giving the men above their station a much easier path to getting straight to the sex part. This is where someone would jump in and say “this doesn’t add up to exactly 80/20″. In a practical sense there is VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE, so who cares? Your odds of ending up on path 1 or path 2 as we’ve discussed them here will shake out to about 80/20. Bet on it- hell, go out for the next year and test it for yourself. Basically what’s going on here is really obvious: a smaller group of men is going to do most of the fucking, even of “restricted” or “good” girls, and it all basically adds up to one to three of ten guys getting laid very regularly as experience (not just mine, but MANY guys) would attest to. The results of you cracking that 20% are VERY predictable, as a good few here have already found out.
And let’s not even get into the whole path 1/path 2/lane changing discussion, where the female tendency seems to be to see paths 1 and 2 as equally good, and that dating a girl at 33 who wouldn’t look at you at 25 is somehow no biggie.
It’s just kind of ridiculous to see some of these female “experts” coming out of the woodwork waving numbers at us who either haven’t spent any time on the field in recent years and/or have basically played the game on “easy” by default, and think they have remapped the matrix. Ok, rant over, and I’m really not that much of a hater, I promise. Just pointing out what I see.
Carry on, O. I will try not to make your job any harder here.
#681 It’s not axiomatic that women are hypergamous, unless you consider “The Earth is currently not completely in glaciers.” as axiomatic. It’s empirical.
Also empirical is that women are paralyzed by choice much more than men. And more easily manipulated by advertising. Hence, it follows by strict logic, that the best way to treat women is to lock them away from choices and influences of other people trying to deceive them, dole them out a pittance, and convince them they are getting great stuff.
So, my question for Stephanie, if we can call her that, which others have, I’m just saying, is, since we took the trouble of contructing this ball for you:
“TFT is just Tinder for Good Girls”, comma,
why didn’t you run with it? I would have already, but I was waiting for you. You want me to, now, before you do, now?
Re hypergamy. Follow the sex and the money.
Women file for divorce more when the woman cheats, not when the man cheats.
Women file for divorce more when the woman makes more money, or when the man loses his job.
@Stephanie
“I am skeptical of [hypergamy].”
Why do women prefer a man who earns more, even when they earn well themselves?
Why do women (on average, with some exceptions) prefer men who are taller than average?
What’s your response to the study I linked that women have more sex with hotter men? If hypergamy weren’t real then you would expect that hot men get no more sex than average or ugly men.
Why are women pickier at speed dating?
What about my and other’s samples of who they’ve had sex with?
I’m disappointed that you so quickly ignored all the evidence in favor of hypergamy’s existence and resorted to diversionary debating tactics. Yohami’s question about whether (and I’m paraphrasing) women like attractive, confident, and successful men (on average) was a perfectly reasonable question. He wasn’t being flippant in saying that you could choose to define them as you wish (presumably in any reasonable fashion you chose).
Re: hypergamy. Eharmony had to stop showing women any men who were shorter than themselves, even though the women had specified “any” in preferred height, because roving hordes of women had banded and threatened lawsuits over the supposed insult of being matched with a short man. Seriously. Even though the women never bothered contacting the shorter men as potential matches, the lawsuit specified remuneration for the time wasted AND for the emotional pain and anguish of having to think of being matched to a man beneath them.
I second Jakes’ comments.
I must confess I’m not impressed with Stephanie’s rhetorical or logical skills. Nor am I enamored with her writing, which is full of run-on sentences, incompletely expressed thoughts, incorrect homonyms, nonsequiturs, and completely unresponsive answers.
I expected better writing and reasoning from someone who claims to have training in economics and finance. I’ve seen high school sophomores wing it better with their writing. Any college freshman in a basic logic course could do a better job defending her claims than she did.
@Everyone
Ok, I will set it straight. No hypergamy does not exist for women. It has in the past when FATHERS married off their DAUGHTERS to the best mate HE could find for HER. There is more anthropological evidence supporting men being hypergamous when arranging marriage for their daughter.
Yeah, Stephanie, keep on digging.
#688
Funny story. Thanks for sharing.
#690 Keep in mind that head-in-sand is a vulnerable, one might say submissive, position.
Do you really expect us to discuss things from a position of assuming we are wrong? Traditional patriarchy was all about assortative monogamous mating. Every single time there’s been a matriarchy (e.g. urban poor currently in the U.S., women went feral and the result is harems for Mr. Bigs and incels for cannon fodder (and prison).
Assortative lifetime no-get-out-of-marriage-free-cards monogamy was the deal. It was the deal that the majority of males, the betas, made with the few desired men, the alphas, to divvy up the women more equitably. It is what works, but women don’t want it.
Stephanie,
Troll.
Hypergamy doesnt exist in women. The fathers of the women in this video set this up
“Eharmony had to stop showing women any men who were shorter than themselves”
Its because their fathers are monitoring their accounts.
“Women file for divorce more when the woman cheats, not when the man cheats.”
Because of patriarchy.
“Women file for divorce more when the woman makes more money, or when the man loses his job.”
He was abusing her with his constant inferiority, plus her father made her do it.
Now keep quiet.
“TFT is just Tinder for Good Girls”
Grindr was a successful location-based hookup app because men like being easy. Tinder’s success is entirely due to women preferring to reject men instead of accepting men. Women *enjoy* swiping left on unattractive men more than they enjoy swiping right on attractive men. Swiping left feels like power, unlimited power! If Tinder had the option of dragging unattractive men to a garbage can, women would like it even better. Women like being difficult.
But signing up for Tinder, or swiping right, or any other kind of actually making an effort to toss your hat in the ring, signals a woman’s acknowledgment of her availability, which women usually don’t want to be so overt about. Tit-for-tat is a way for a woman to feel more discreet. She can plausibly deny any sign of actual interest at any time, so she feels like a Good Girl. Women enjoy ambiguity, mixed signals, and making men jump through hoops. Women like being difficult.
Getting back to “actual” interest. Tit-for-tat doesn’t *limit* rejection, it *enables* rejection at every level. From the start, if it starts with eye game (it doesn’t have to, btw. Eye game is a tiny tool in the toolbox), she can reject multitudes simultaneously by refusing to play. It almost doesn’t get better than that for woman. But I suppose you could say that what you mean by limiting rejection is that it limits the investment that the interested person, e.g. the man, has to make to get to the level at which he is rejected. I reject this meaning also.
If a man is attractive enough to capture a woman’s attention and engaging enough to pass a couple of her hoops, his surest and swiftest path is to escalate. Yes, it gets him rejected faster, so he doesn’t bother wasting his time entertaining her by player her game. Or, it gets him what he wants faster, so he doesn’t bother wasting his time entertaining her by player her game.
playing her game, not player her game, obviously
BTW I don’t think our (royal we …) commenting here is overkill, yet, nor making the rubble bounce. Maybe, just maybe, if we keep striking then the iron will get hot.
“if we keep striking then the iron will get hot.”
Im just trying to reach 700 comments.
More game theory. The Secretary Game has the 37% solution. From a link at Dalrock.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/05/15/312537965/how-to-marry-the-right-girl-a-mathematical-solution?ft=1&f=1001
From a limited pool of candidates, the optimal strategy is to reject the first 37% and then accept the first one that is better than the first 37%. The cognitive problem for women is that they erroneously believe there will be a lot of candidates.
@jf12;
If Tinder had the option of dragging unattractive men to a garbage can, women would like it even better. Women like being difficult.
Actually, that’s brilliant. But why stop there? You could drag them to a toilet and flush it. Could call it “Flushr”. Or how about a wood chipper? “Chippr”!
You should totally develop this. You’ll get rich, then make us all jealous with the hot chicks you’re pulling.
#702 If I had a nickel for every brilliant million dollar idea I’ve had, I’d have well over a million dollars. I lost interest in further personally developing them after the first few big decade-long patent disputes, so I just spread them around unceasingly.
Flushr*
I should totally develop that app, it’s my line of work.
Then I would expose the data (90% more men flush men) and be called a misoginist. Until we settle that women are doing it because men deserve it. Oh the fortune.
No seriously, I’ll do it and share credit and profit.
*Then I would expose the data (women flush 90% of men)
Fixed. I cannot type properly with this level of excitement.
Obsidian,
I don’t have a personal beef. My issue? This strategy is built on false premises, a false perception of the world really. I think the author realizes the “sexes are equal and identical” script is wrong, but the changes are superifical, not fundamental.
Ex: women obviously like taller men. This is reject as an example of hypergamy, and adjusted to “a woman who is 5’0 will go for a guy who is 5’6.”
This obviously does not make sense. We at J4G think that women ARE hypergamous, and we know that men compete with EACH OTHER. Guy is 5’6 in a room full of midgets? Gold. Guy is 5’6 in a room full of NBA starters. Dead in the water.
Premises are all wrong, it’s built on a sanitized version of female mating strategies (assume women want to mate with their equals, will always express interest in their equals, etc) and deliberately targeted at taking aggressive mating strategies away from men (don’t read the Game, I have this other thing that works fine!)
Regarding women and worrying:
Right now we are missing two addresses for wedding attendes. The women on the fiance’s side of the family are going friggin’ nuts over it. Two addresses missing! OmG! Someone might not come to our party!
I don’t need to get texts about this at work. Right now we are over-shooting our bad debt expense by at least 50%. I have $50,000 in payments that need to be found one by one, $300 increments, cause some idiot wrote them off. I am missing $500,000 from a major insurance company and we have a client with cash flow issues that regularly misses $7-8 million payments that I need to check on in 20 minutes.
Oh and my system is slow as donkey-nuts, which is why I am commenting here right now.
That needs to get done. You’re pretty white dress party followed by dream vacation is NOT a priority.
So when that’s sanitized to become “women are natural worriers” coupled with shaming “you are an irresponsible man for not assuaging your woman’s worries,” my attitude is to flip you off. I do not exist to take care off childish tea party concerns.
“You’ll get rich, then make us all jealous with the hot chicks you’re pulling.”
You mean because his financial success would open him up emotionally, facilitating his long-lost ability to invest emotionally in a woman in an equitable and scalable way, that is desperately lacking in men, setting him so far above the 80% of men who are attractive and good but just not titting emotionally for her tatting emotionally?
Finally. A road map for good guys like me who are so damaged as to measure our emotional investments according to our own needs, leveled according to our own assessment of a woman’s attributes and capacities to give and receive, to go forth and improve myself beyond my six-pack abs, piercing intelligence, compassionate disposition, proven work ethic, creativity, sense of humor, and oozing masculinity.
I knew something besides my lagging income and uncertain career trajectory was holding me back. I’m so happy now that I know what will work, even if best confined to a bar. The 3:1 ratio and blue-faced smart-phone girls looking for something better to do will no longer be an issue. I can’t wait to see my 6’4″ athletic extroverted entrepreneur buddy skulk away as my eye contact savvy crushes his “boring” game. Suck it bro!
Women swipe left about 100 men for every one man they swipe right.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/11/tinder-dating-600m-swipes/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/225xme/tinder_is_pretty_inefficient_for_men/
It’s like an automatic rifle for spraying rejection bullets.
“Women swipe left about 100 men for every one man they swipe right.”
OK, Im gonna set you straight. This is NOT happening. Get over it.
#709 ? If my math is right, 600 million swipes compared to 6 million matches is about 100 to 1.
no no no la lalalalala la
This is not happening because I dont use Tinder.
Case solved.
@jf12 708:
This is also an example of letting numbers dictate your reality. Some of us are using it to pretty good effect. It helps to have professional pics and not take shirtless selfies, though.
@ADBG
If I could hand you a beer right now I would.
@All
You guys should realize what’s happening with Stephanie in this discussion, because it has the tendency to happen at other places where women try to join in on men discussing game online, and it’s happened at these places years before there was a “manosphere”. Basically: Woman shows up at forum with some novel idea that either says the guys are all wet, or that their basic premise is flawed. Guys point out myriad reasons why the idea is faulty or incomplete and explain that they’ve already tested and thrown out this idea based on real-life interactions. The two groups go round and round getting clear on what the guys have already proven in the most practical sense, at the woman’s request, only to have her demand proof of or try to redefine another thing they have already proven.
We have a prime example here- someone coming here and telling you a “new” way to play the game and then getting slippery and trying to question information that’s been known and tested *for years already*. Seriously, it feels like she’s trying to take us back in time like 7 years. We’ve been here before, and I’m surprised more of you haven’t picked up on the fact that this is almost always how it goes when women join these discussions. I’m even more surprised and disappointed that a woman who seemed as if she should be really well versed and vetted came to us with something so basic. Not sure it’s worth any more of our time, gents.
@Jakes 713,
this is almost always how it goes when women join these discussions
True. I guess there’s always the hope that the new woman is going to be the next Dr. Helen or Karen Straughan. So it’s worth giving them a listen, because even if the probability of success is low, the value of women like that are high, because they can’t be dismissed as angry bitter loser men (like us!).
Most of this thread has been productively off-topic anyway.
Jf12,
The primary motivation that led me to this corner of the internet was my lack of success with internet dating. These numbers that you are providing about Tinder are eye popping. I can’t think of a better way for the girls to alienate the boys en masse than to continue with this foolishness. They can’t reject 99 out of 100 boys when there are just as many boys as girls indefinnitely.
#714
I should point out that Dr. Helen and K. Straughan are listened to in the sphere precisely because they never try to make smartass female observations about dating techniques and Game in general.
#553
Damn, I forgot to add one:
– expatriate
#378
Is Spring Rain some vagina-cleaning liquid substance?
#715 unfortunately I know what will help if you simply want higher N. Bongo’s gonna have to slap some Lulubelles. Put another way, if you immediately aggressively approach women (don’t bother ceasing to approach while you “better” yourself in other ways), giving them *aggressive* specifically sexual “Attention, validation and affirmation of their worth as women, as sexual creatures.’, i.e. viewing them predatorily as sexual objects, you will see immediate success. I’m not going to caveat about calibrating aggressiveness, because every man who is not being successful enough is being far to unaggressive. Pedal to the medal on aggressiveness all the way.
You don’t have to go for sexual closes. You can slough it off to relationship closes, or any other kind of close. But it has to start sexual and escalate sexual. Not my fault.
#172 I don’t watch porn. 10 minutes “effort” is not what leads to satisfying sex for a woman. It works for us, which is why you like it, but not for them.
#173 Because I find the belief that marriage confers a perpetual consent to sex on demand reprehensible. Knowing where people stand on the issue helps me better understand who they are.
#175 Does not need to answer, because your comment was an attempt at concern deflection: You are not really interested in the state of my marriage, but use this question as an opportunity to put me down in the venerable tradition of the schoolyard “My dick is bigger than yours” games, albeit with the passive-aggressive “concern” twist. It also helps you avoid answering my initial direct question. Let’s be clear: you attacked first, in the passive-aggressive way, and now claim to be the attacked party. Cute, as schoolyard games go, but I feel too old for them these days. I get it, though.
I will indulge you, to a point, especially since you seem prone to passive-aggressive assumptions (“That is not carte blanche to ignore your wife on a regular basis”): when you are married for 40+ years, you will experience many life’s challenges that include losses and chronic and life-threatening illnesses. When faced with those, sex sometimes is not the utmost priority you seem to believe it is in marriage. Far from seeing it as neglect, loving couples, who respect and care for each other, learn to understand how such challenges strengthen their bond. Hard to believe, I know.
#176 Chemotherapy, for one, has a side effect of messing with your libido for prolonged periods of time.
Answer the question. It is really quite simple, and has nothing to do with the state of your marriage. It is a value-free empirical question. How often do you turn your wife down for sex?
You are arguing against positions no one has taken and asserting that you are the only one who understands these basic relationship concepts. Newsflash: many of us have been married for years or decades. Your asinine statements are less valuable than a 6 year old asserting 2+2=4.
Big deal. We get that.
What we are struggling against is this:
This is carte blanche to excuse any neglect and abuse a person can think of.
“I’m tired” is generally a pathetic excuse humans use for all sorts of things, from lack of exercise to paying the bills to taking out the damn trash. Humans often take the path of least resistance. This is not acceptable for either men or women in relation to their wives or husbands. Saying “I do” means you are now assuming responsibility for their needs and their hopes and their dreams.
This is ESPECIALLY true of sexual needs in a monogamous relationship.
Our perception is that a non-trivial number of wives are resorting to these lame excuses to neglect their husbands.
BTW, wrong thread. Not a good impression.
#721 I’ll answer the simple question, as an example. I’ve never turned my wife down for sex. Whenever she’s needed whatever, I’ve been willing to do what I could and inventive as to workarounds as circumstances dictated. The closest I come to turning down is not initiating, or not pushing for more.
#721 re: turning down. A story. My wife, though the middle of three girls, was her parents’ needy baby, and the fact that she thought enough of me to agree to marry me both greatly impressed and greatly relieved her parents, that someone else would be responsible for her. I was the son my father in law never had, from the first hour of the first day I met him, and he was in many ways a father to me, my own father having died in his mid 40s after being away working himself to death in my childhood.
It may suffice to say we were close, but I’ll belabor it for context. One time towards the end of his over a decade long battle with prostate cancer, he became nauseated while I was feeding him through his feeding tube at the kitchen table and he vomited heavily all over both of us so I carried him to the shower and undressed him and showered us off.
Anyway, one time near the beginning of his treatments in his mid 70s, while we were at their place his wife was expressing, for I suppose public sympathy from her daughter and I, her sadness at her husband’s medically-induced complete impotence. He laughed and asked what it was to her, since she had turned him down 100% of the time in the previous ten years. She didn’t noticeably flinch, like a rational being, but continued wistfully “I still like to be asked.”
Apparently her version of sexuality was entirely in being asked (and turning down).
Kat George also shies away from coming out and saying what she really wants.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/kat-george/2014/05/dont-date-a-nice-guy/
Jf12 at 719,
I haven’t run into any Lulubelle’s. However, I have found Naughty Bear and I don’t think I want to go there. He’s homocidal (ursacidal?). I won’t link as he is too upsetting.
#725 re: “I haven’t run into any Lulubelle’s.”
The abundance mentality has to be a foundation. You have to get to an abundance mentality, probably from below the foundation, by crawling out from under and getting up and getting around and you should see a number of Lulubelles. If you don’t see them then you must extend your mating range. They still won’t see you until you act sexually aggressive towards them
Jf12,
The part that scares me is that, once i find Lulubell, that’s when the trouble really starts. Could this be what drove Naughty Bear to be ursacidal?
FW, alls I can say is she’s not gonna find herself.
#435 re: looks distibution. I’ve been told I’m ok looking by women, I presume as a kindness, but I can see I’m 4. Probably a relative 3 when a young man looking like Jon Cryer, maybe a relative 6 now as a baby-faced Ben Stein.
Dating N > 100, majority of women 5 or less, mode of 4. Uniformly they were disappointed in my looks, and with few exceptions they erroneously believed themselves rating 3 or 4 HB points higher. Every 4 thinks she’s 7, and many 4s think they’re 8s. To help calibrate my ratings, Patty Loveless peaked about 7.
Sex/marriage N = 2, both about 8 at peak.
[…] 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 […]
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