The Rational Male - Rollo Tomassi 2013
Hypergamy
Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of social proof.
After I’d finished my Chivalry vs. Altruism post, I had to pause for a moment to consider the impact of ’women & children first’ as an operative social convention. Even before the overt rise of the feminine imperative, this female protectionism was in effect, and I’m fairly certain that this was a result of our primal hind-brain wiring to protect our families. Most higher order animals have evolved this instinct so I don’t see that as much of a stretch. However, humans being a much more complex species, I think that the social convention of WaCF goes a bit deeper than a simplistic protectionism. In fact, I’d argue that ’familial protectionism’ is more of a convenient foil for women (and sympathetic men) who’d rather see men’s mortal sacrifice in honorific terms than the much uglier truth.
Tits for Tat
In its rawest form, the sexual marketplace of our early ancestors would’ve been one where feminine hypergamy and Alpha dominance would’ve been more or less in balance. Obviously men being the stronger sex would’ve forcibly put women into a weaker position in the earliest incarnations of the sexual marketplace, but also consider that men fought and killed each other for access to those breeding rights — short version; men were disposable.
As our species began to socialize, collectivize and cooperate, our earliest social conventions would’ve revolved around the environmental prompts and biological cues that were essential to the survival of their more feral ancestors.
The earliest form of proto-Game would’ve been a sexual quid pro quo. Can’t figure out how to seduce that hot, hunter-gatherer woman in the tribe? Save her ass from being torn limb from limb by a saber tooth tiger and she’ll reciprocate her gratitude with open legs. In other words, risk your life and women will reward you with sex in gratitude. Today that may not be a reality in practice, but it’s the deductive logic that’s led to the psychological internalization and the social doctrines that follow it.
It’s such a primal, male-deductive-logic principle that’s worked so successfully, for so long, that social contingencies were evolved to both mitigate it and exploit it. Don’t
believe me? Promise a young middle eastern girl 70 virgins in heaven and see if she’ll strap explosives to herself. The downside to this is that men often do “die trying.”
All of this kind of brought me around to thinking about the psychological ’software’ that’s been evolved into our species as a result of environmental adaptations of the past. In War Brides I go into detail about the Stockholm Syndrome women seem to have an inborn propensity for, which logically makes them predisposed to abandoning emotional investments more readily than men. Considering the brutality of our feral past, evolving a capacity for quick emotional abandonment and reinvestment would’ve been a valuable survival trait for women (thus insuring a perpetuation of the species), however, in the present it serves to complicate newly developed social dynamics in terms of parental and ethical considerations.
Likewise, men have evolved into the disposable sex as a result of that same feral past. In today’s environment it’s very easy for men to draw upon ethical indignation about our disposable status, but it’s not primarily due to social influences. To be sure, social influence has definitely exploited men’s disposability, but the root of that devaluation (in contrast to women’s) really lies in our evolutionary past and our biological make up. Men have always been disposable — so much so that women evolved psychological
contingencies (War Brides) to cope with that disposability.
As socialization and acculturation progressed, so too did the social rationales for men’s disposability. It became honorable to sacrifice oneself, ostensibly for a greater cause, but subversively as a means to recognition.
Martyrdom is the ultimate expression of social proof.
Appreciating the Sacrifice
Unfortunately, as is women’s biological imperative, once a man’s martyred himself
women seek a suitable substitute within the week. Two years after I posted it on Rational Male and I’m still getting a lot of response on my Appreciation post, and predictably most of the criticism is rooted in assuming my intent was to illustrate women being inferior to men in terms of sincerely appreciating the sacrifices he must make to facilitate her reality.
The inability of women appreciating men’s sacrifices isn’t an issue of who’s better than who, it’s merely an observation of facts and corollaries. What I think critics fail to
recognize is that I’m simply relating the observed mechanics; any conditionality they choose to apply to those mechanics are their own opinions and biases.
“Yeah Rollo, it’s pretty fucked up that women have some inborn ability to ’switch off’ their emotions for you in favor of a higher SMV male…”
You’re right it’s pretty messed up. It’s also unethical, insincere and duplicitous when you also consider the planning involved in dissociating her emotional investment in favor of
a new investment; but all of these are social conditions we apply to the underlying mechanic. It’s also pretty fucked up that men’s lives intrinsically have less value than women’s — but we can apply esoteric principles of honor, duty and courage to men killing themselves and engaging in the dynamic of their own disposability.
We can also apply principles of cowardice and betrayal to men who refuse that sacrifice in favor of self-preservation, but these are qualification of social conventions that we establish as a culture.
The biomechanics are what they are, irrespective of the social paint we color them with. It’s not that women lack an intellectual capacity to appreciate men’s sacrifices, it’s that this isn’t their evolved psychological predisposition. The social constructs which tells her to expect a man’s sacrifice, which normalizes his martyrdom, have evolved to better dissociate her own investment in her biological imperatives (i.e. Hypergamy).
In English this means evolution has prepared her socially and psychologically for his sacrifice, and readies her to move to a better provisioning should one present itself in her surroundings. Likewise, men putting themselves in harms way is rooted in our competing for resources — in this case breeding rights.
Ravenous wolves tearing apart an elk aren’t evil; they’re doing what nature has prepared them to do in order to survive. This isn’t to give anyone, male or female, some biologically determined free pass for bad behavior, it’s just to understand where this behavior originates and how it came to be what we make of it today.
Reader Nas had an interesting question regarding female duplicity:
“Evolution has largely selected-for human females with a capacity to form psychological schema that preserve an ego-investment that would otherwise afflict them with debilitating anxiety, guilt, and the stresses that result from being continuously, consciously aware of their own behavioral incongruities. Evolution selects-for solipsistic women who are blissfully unaware of their solipsism.”
Can you please expand on this Rollo? I find it fascinating.
OK, baton down the hatches, we’re heading for dangerous waters. What I’m getting at here is suggesting that women’s propensity for solipsism is a psychologically evolved mechanism. In other words, it helped women to cope with the harsh realities of the past, to develop a more focused sense of self-interest.
To really grasp this you need to understand women’s brain function and chemistry. I’m not going to get too detailed in this, but suffice it to say numerous studies show that a
female brain is hard-wired for emotional response and communication on a more
complex level than men. I think this is pretty much an established point for my readers, but if you disagree, well that’s going to have be the topic of another post.
Given the harsh realities that women had to endure since the paleolithic era, it served them better to psychologically evolve a sense of self that was more resilient to the brutal changes she could expect be subjected to. Consider the emotional investment a woman needs to put into mothering a child that could be taken away or killed at a moment’s notice.
Anxiety, fear, guilt, insecurity are all very debilitating emotions, however it’s women’s innate psychology that makes them more durable to these stresses. Statistically, men have far greater difficulty in coping with psychological trauma (think PTSD) than women. Why should that be?
On the face of it you may think that men’s better ability to rationally remove themselves from the emotional would make them better at coping with psychological trauma, but the reverse is actually the case. Women seem to have a better ability to accept emotional sacrifice and move on, either ignoring those stresses or blocking them entirely from their conscious awareness. Women possessing a more pronounced empathic capacity undoubtedly served our species in nurturing young and understanding tribal social dynamics, however it was also a liability with regards to a hostile change in her environment.
Stockholm Syndrome is far more pronounced in female captives (the story of Jaycee Duguard comes to mind), why should that be? Because women’s peripheral environment dictated the need to develop psychological mechanisms to help them survive. It was the women who could make that emotional disconnect when the circumstances necessitated it who survived and lived to breed when their tribe was decimated by a superior tribe. This is also known as the War Bride dynamic; women develop an empathy with their conquerors by necessity.
Men are the disposable sex, women, the preserved sex. Men would simply die in favor of a superior aggressor, but women would be reserved for breeding. So it served a feminine imperative to evolve an ability to cut former emotional ties more readily (in favor of her new captor) and focus on a more self-important psychology — solipsism.
Now, here is where I’ll step off the diving board and into the theoretical. It’s my purview that a lot of what men would complain are duplicitous acts of indifference towards them are really rooted in this innate feminine solipsism.
That’s a bold statement, I realize, but I’d argue that what men take for inconsiderate
indifference in a break up or in ruthless shit tests is really a woman tapping into this innate, self-preserving solipsism. Combine hypergamy with the chronically hostile environments of the past and you end up with a modern day feminine solipsism.
Add to this an acculturated sense of female entitlement, social conventions that excuse this ’duplicity’, and a constant misdirection of intent by women themselves, and you come to where we are now. As if that weren’t enough, throw in the element of hypergamy and the countdown in terms of fertility and long term provisioning that a woman must deal with before hitting the imminent Wall, and now you have a fuller picture of the
conditions and stresses that necessitate this solipsistic nature.
Ever wonder why it is a woman can ’get over you’ so quickly after a break up from a relationship you’d thought was rock solid for so long? Ever wonder why she returns to the abusive boyfriend she hopes will change for her? Look no further than feminine solipsism.
After reading all of this I can understand if anyone thinks this is a very nihilistic
observation. Let me be clear, this dynamic is real by order of degrees for individual
women. A woman’s conditions may be such that she’s never needed to tap into this reserve.
Also, we are dealing with subconscious elements of her personality here, so it would come as no surprise that feminine solipsism wouldn’t be cognitive for most women — thus offensive and denied. I’m not asking that anyone accept this idea as gospel, just that the dots do connect very predictably.
Women’s Sexual Pluralism
In a study I linked by Dr. Martie Hasselton there was a very salient point that kind of gets passed up since the focus of that social experiment was more about isolating variables in women’s physical preferences for males. That point was illustrating women’s pluralistic sexual strategies — short term breeding strategies whilst in her sexual peak, progressing to long term sexual strategies as her sexual agency becomes less valuable and subject to the rigors of competition anxiety in the SMP.
According to strategic pluralism theory (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000), men have evolved to pursue reproductive strategies that are contingent on their value on the mating market. More attractive men accrue reproductive benefits from spending more time seeking multiple mating partners and relatively less time investing in offspring. In contrast, the reproductive effort of less attractive men, who do not have the same mating opportunities, is better allocated to investing heavily in their mates and offspring and spending
relatively less time seeking additional mates.
From a woman’s perspective, the ideal is to attract a partner who confers both long-term investment benefits and genetic benefits. Not all women, however, will be able to attract long-term investing mates who also display heritable fitness cues. Consequently, women
face trade-offs in choosing mates because they may be forced to choose between males displaying fitness indicators or those who will assist in offspring care and be good long-term mates (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). The most straightforward prediction that
follows is that women seeking short-term mates, when the man’s only contribution to offspring is genetic, should prefer muscularity more than women seeking long-term mates.
Over the course of a woman’s life the priorities and criteria a she holds for a ’suitable’ mate fluctuate in response to the conditions she finds herself in. The criterion for short term coupling are much easier to demand when a woman is in her peak fertility phase of life and thus places these prerequisites above what she would find more desirable for a long-term pairing. The extrinsic male-characteristic prerequisites for short-term sexual strategy (hot, quick Alpha sex) preempts the long-term qualifications for as long as she’s sexually viable enough to attract men.
Thus it follows that as a woman exceeds or is outclassed of her previous SMV, her priorities then shift to an attraction for more intrinsic male qualities. For the short-term strategy, quick impulsivity and gratifying sensation take precedent. For the long-term strategy, slow discernment, prudence, familiarity and comfort satisfy a desire for security as she exits the competitive stage of the SMP.
The dirty little secret to all of this is that although a woman may abandon one strategy for another depending on the phase of life she’s in, nature has seen fit to make sure she never quite abandons one for the other completely. As her environment warrants, she can readily re-prioritize her conditions for intimacy in order to achieve that sexually strategic balance.
This is a very uncomfortable truth for contemporary women in that it exposes the underpinnings of a great many feminized social conventions intended to misdirect men in an effort to maintain superiority in sexual selectivity and effecting these strategies. Men becoming aware of the pluralistic nature of hypergamy is the greatest threat to the feminine imperative.
Nothing is more threatening yet simultaneously attractive to a woman than a man who is aware of his own value to women.
Biomechanics
An even more uncomfortable truth is that women’s pluralistic sexual strategy is literally written into their genetics. In a woman’s sexual peak, across her ovulatory cycle she will tend to seek out High-Testosterone cued Alpha Men to pursue for her short term breeding strategy during her pro-phase of ovulation. In her menstruation period her preferences switch to preferring the long term security of a docile, secure Beta provider, and thus filters for these traits in her pair-bonding.
I’m elaborating on the genetic aspects here because I think it’s important for men to
understand the biological mechanics of women’s sexual strategies in a broader scope.
I endure an endless stream criticism for implying that women are selective sluts.
Obviously women in the general whole have the capacity to resist these base impulses to “go slut”, however this is the base biological impulse against which they resist by conviction, rationale, sentimentalism or simply being realistic about having a low SMP valuation.
As I’ve said before, all women have the capacity to throw caution to the wind in order to pursue her short term sexual strategy. Right place, right guy, right ovulatory phase, I was drunk, he was cute and one thing led to another,.. Nature selected for women who could best effect a covert pluralistic sexual strategy.
Due to the cyclic nature of women’s sexuality it’s a misnomer to think that “women are just as sexual as men“, however, to the importance of sexual selectivity dominance,
women are much more sexual than most men are led to believe.
The key is understanding that women want to be sexual on their own terms as their cycle dictates. Essentially they are serving two masters in this: they want the freedom to pursue a short term sexual opportunity (as well as the freedom from social repercussions as a result) and also the prudence to filter for a man willing to assume the responsibilities of parental investment and provisioning.
NAWALT
(Not all women are like that)
From a recent discussion thread:
Here is a tip — level headed girls who are intelligent have told me they don’t want to get fake breasts, even when they’re an A cup. Also some girls prefer to take it a step slower. They don’t NEED immediate gratification, they know that a good thing might take time, and here is an idea, you know how women think men are dumb — MOST ARE. That’s why they play games — to weed out players!
This was from a guy. I used to believe this, until I understood the fundamentals of female hypergamy. For far too many men it’s a comfortable fiction to think that attractive, self-conscious, “level headed” women really have the presence and forethought to ’weed out’ what men would rationally think would be the best fit for them.
However, observably and predictably, their behaviors and choices don’t bear this out. On the contrary, their behaviors prove the validity of female hypergamy even in the
personalities of what we’d consider the most virtuous women. Even the bright,
intelligent, good-girl selects for, and sexually prepares herself for, the most immediately accessible Alpha male her attractiveness will command and they also filter for the
players, and develop bonds with men they believe might provide for their long term
security when their necessity dictates that they should. They’re the same girl.
Without all the social pretense, on the most root level, women are keenly aware that men’s primary interest in them is fucking — everything else is ancillary to sex. The difficulty women encounter in perfecting a long-term sexual strategy is men’s singular primary strategy — the value a woman has beyond the sexual comes after she’s been sexual.
The Truth is Out There
Almost a year ago Ferd over at In Mala Fide wrote a very eye-opening post about what appears to be an endemic of online Self-Shooters — millions of unprompted, unsolicited young women shooting and posting nude and semi-nude pictures of themselves from a smart-phone. Just image search Google keyword “self shots”, you’ll get the idea. And it goes well beyond just teenage dalliances with bathroom pictorials; with the rise of
convenient digital media creation we get a clearer view of women’s true sexual
landscape.
Have a look at the sheer volume and frequency with which average women will voluntarily become sexual. Are they all sluts? How many of these women have uttered the words ” I want to wait so I know you want me for more than sex?” How many of these women would make great wives in 5-10 years? How many of these women are already (or have been) wife material? How many of these women are thought of as the sweet natured “good girl”? How many guys have considered these girls “Quality Women” at some point? We can look at them with their clothes off and declare them sluts, but would you know the difference if you saw her in church?
From the same critic:
Most girls will go through an experimental phase at least. I don’t think that makes them sluts, necessarily. Depends on degree.
I half agree with this. There is most definitely a phase of life where women will opportunistically leverage their sexuality — usually this is mid-teens to late 20s, but you have to also take into consideration why this sexual attention is such an urgency as well as being so rewarding for a woman in this phase. Hypergamy and a rapidly closing window of SMV spur on that urgency.
I’m also compelled to point out that women in their 30s, 40s and even 50s will still “slut it up” and seek that sexual attention if their conditions dictate that they must return to that agency. Again, refer to the self-shots phenomenon; not all of these girls are 18 y.o.
misguided youths experimenting with their sexuality for the first time. A solid percentage of them are post-30s women, and some older than that showing off their ’new’ post-
divorce body after 3 months training at the gym. Are they still ’experimenting’ or are they feeling the need to retroactively solicit male sexual response due to changes in their lives’ conditions?
The point I was making is that the “quality woman” meme is entirely subjective to the sexually strategic conditions that a woman finds herself in. As per usual, guys would like to make their necessity a virtue and define whatever is working for them currently as an ideal situation without considering the factors that contribute to it or would radically change it if those conditions were altered. When you met your devoted, soccer-mom wife in her 20s, your first thought wasn’t “I wonder if she’s a quality woman?” It was probably more along the lines of “I wonder if she sucks a good dick?” At the time, the conditions were different for her, and her personality reflected an adaptation to them.
Now What?
So where does this leave a Man? I think it’s determined by where you are yourself in life and what your expectations for yourself are. If you’re young and just beginning to find your footing in the SMP then I’d advise spinning plates and enjoying yourself, but with the understanding that you are learning from experience. Maybe that’s as far as you want to (responsibly) go, or maybe you entertain the idea of becoming monogamous at some point. Naturally, I wouldn’t advise even experimenting with monogamy for any guy under the age of 30, but lets assume you do have the experience and have an understanding of how the SMP and hypergamy work. The most valuable bit of wisdom you can carry into a monogamy of your own decision and your own frame is to understand this sexual pluralism in women. Accept hypergamy as a woman’s operative state at all times.
The most common words hear newly divorced men utter is some version of “I never saw this coming in my wildest imagination, we were married for 20 years, we have 4 kids, how could she be over me so quickly?” A lack of understanding the basics of hypergamy is exactly why men are blindsided.
Hypergamy doesn’t care how great a Father you are to your kids.
Hypergamy doesn’t care how you rearranged your college majors and career choice in life to better accommodate her.
Hypergamy doesn’t care how inspired or fulfilled you feel as a stay-at-home Dad.
Hypergamy doesn’t care that you moved across 4 states to accommodate your long
distance relationship.
Hypergamy doesn’t care how ’supportive’ you’ve always been of her decisions or if you identify as a ’male feminist’.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about the sincerity of your religious convictions or aspirations of high purpose.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about those words you said at your wedding.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about how you funded her going back to college to find a more rewarding career.
Hypergamy doesn’t care how great a guy you are for adopting the children she had with other men.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about your divine and forgiving nature in excusing her
“youthful indiscretions.”
Hypergamy doesn’t care about your magnanimity in assuming responsibility for her student loans, and credit card debt after you’re married.
Hypergamy doesn’t care if “he was your best friend.”
Hypergamy doesn’t care about the coffee in bed you bring her or how great a cook
you are.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about all those chick flicks you sat through with her and
claimed to like.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about how well you do your part of the household chores.
Hypergamy doesn’t care about how much her family or friends like you.
Hypergamy doesn’t care if you think you’re a “Good” guy or about how convincing your argument is for your sense of honor.
Hypergamy doesn’t care whether the children are biologically yours or not.
Hypergamy doesn’t care if “she was drunk, he was cute, and one thing led to another,..”
Hypergamy doesn’t care how sweet, funny or intellectual you are.
Hypergamy doesn’t care if you “never saw it coming.”
Hypergamy doesn’t care if you’re bitter.
The Disposables
War Brides
Mrs. Hyde
Hypergamy Doesn’t Care
When I started in on the Hypergamy doesn’t care,.. post I knew it was going to come off as some unavoidably deterministic rant about the evils of hypergamy.
That post was born out of all the efforts I’ve repeatedly read men relate to me when they say how unbelievable their breakups were. As if all of the investment, emotional,
physical, financial, familial, etc. would be rationally appreciated as a buffer against hypergamy. The reason for their shock and disbelief is that their mental state originates in the assumption that women are perfectly rational agents and should take all of their efforts, all of their personal strengths, all of the involvement in their women’s lives into account before trading up to a better prospective male. There is a prevailing belief that all of their merits, if sufficient, should be proof against her hypergamous considerations.
For men, this is a logically sound idea. All of that investment adds up to their concept of relationship equity. So it’s particularly jarring for men to consider that all of that equity becomes effectively worthless to a woman presented with a sufficiently better prospect as per the dictates of her hypergamy.
That isn’t to say that women don’t take that equity into account when determining
whether to trade up or in their choice of men if they’re single, but their operative
point of origin is always hypergamy. Women obviously can control their hypergamic mpulses in favor of fidelity, just as men can and do keep their sexual appetites in check, but always know that it isn’t relationship equity she’s rationally considering in that
moment of decision.
This dynamic is exactly the reason the surrogate boyfriend, the perfect nice guy orbiter who’s invested so much into identifying with his target, gets so enraged when his dream girl opts for the hot asshole jerk. She’s not making a logical decision based upon his invested relational equity. Quite the opposite; she’s empirically proving for him that his equity is worthless by rewarding the hot jerk — who had essentially no equity — with her sex and intimacy. He doesn’t understand that hypergamy doesn’t care about relational equity.
This is a really tough truth for guys to swallow, because knowing how hypergamy
works necessarily devalues their concept of relational equity with the woman they’re committed to, or considering commitment with. Men’s concept of relational equity stems from a mindset that accepts negotiated desire (not genuine desire) as a valid means of relationship security. This is precisely why most couples counseling fails — its operative origin begins from the misconception that genuine desire (hypergamy) can be negotiated indefinitely.
The Rational Female
There are a lot of fluffy little pieces of interpretive Alpha fiction extolling the virtues of Beta men (who are told they are the real Alphas only without teeth, pee sitting down and only say sweet things about girls) Irony aside, these female authors still fall prey to two fallacies in their pleas for a better Beta.
The first is as discussed above; the hope or the realistic expectation that women’s hindbrain hypergamy can be sublimated in favor of a rational cognitive decision making when choosing with whom to spread her legs for, much less settle down with. The limbic influence hypergamy has over women’s decision making processes is a constant
subroutine playing in the background. The short answer is this is a mistaken belief that healthy relationships can be rooted in negotiated desire (which is also called ’obligated desire’ in the real world).
This then leads into the second fallacy which presumes relationship equity — even the potential for that equity — will make the life time commitment to a “he’ll-haffta-do” Beta endurable while repressing her innate hypergamy. Hypergamy doesn’t care about relational equity. If it’s a consideration at all in a woman’s decision making process, it’s only for comparative purposes when assessing risk motivated by hypergamy. Some times that risk association is present in deciding whether to accept a marriage proposal, sometimes it’s present when she decides another man’s genetic potential rivals that of the provider she’s already committed to, but in all instances the originating prompt is still hypergamy.
The Rational Male
All of that may sound like I’m excusing men from the equation, I’m not. When men progressively become more aware of their sexual market value, the better their capacity develops to assess long term investment potential with women. The trouble with this model, in its present form, is that the phase at which men are just becoming aware of their true long term value to women (usually around age 30) is almost exactly the phase (just pre-Wall) in which women hope to press men unaware of their SMV into their long term provisioning schema.
As this relates to men, most spend the majority of their teens and 20′s pursuing women, following the dictates of their biological impulses, and to varying degrees of success learn from experience what really seems like women’s duplicity or fickleness. So it comes as a breath of fresh air for the average (see Beta) guy to finally encounter what he believes is a woman who’s “down to earth” and seems genuinely concerned with hearth and family at age 29. Her past character, her very nature, even her single-mommyness can be overlooked and/or forgiven in light of finding what he believes is such a rare jewel.
There’s a new breed of White Knight in the manosphere who love to enthusiastically promote the idea of rigorously vetting women as potential wives. It sounds like virtue.
For serial monogamists playing the ’Good Guy’ card, it sounds so satisfying to lay claim to having experience and integrity enough to be a good judge or authority of what will or will not do for his ’exacting standards’.
This is really a new form of Beta Game; “look out ladies, I’ve been through the paces so if you’re not an approximate virgin and know how to bake a hearty loaf of bread, this guy is moving on,..” and on, and on, and on. All any of this really amounts to is a better form of identification Game, because ultimately a profession of being a Good Guy is still an attempt to be what he expects his ideal woman would want — a good judge (of her) character.
Know this right now, no man (myself included) in the history of humanity has ever fully or accurately vetted any woman he married. And certainly not any guy who married prior to the age of 30 or had fewer than 1 LTR in his past. It’s not that high school sweethearts who last a lifetime don’t exist, it’s that no man can ever accurately determine how the love of his life will change over the course of that lifetime.
Right about now, I can hear the “wow, that’s some pretty raw shit there Mr. Tomassi” from the gallery, and I agree, but ask the guy on his second divorce how certain he was that he’d done his due diligence with his second wife based on all his past experience.
Bear this truth in mind, you do not buy into a good marriage or LTR, you create one, you build one. Your sweet little Good Girl who grew up in the Amish Dutch Country is just as hypergamous as the club slut you nailed last night. Different girls, different contexts, same hypergamy. You may have enough experience to know a woman who’d make a good foundation, but you ultimately build your own marriage/monogamy based on your own strengths or dissolve it based on inherent flaws — there are no pre-fab marriages.
Relational Equity
Rollo Tomassi:
“Hypergamy is a selected-for survival mechanism.”
Aunt Sue:
“Hypergamy states that a woman seeks a man of higher status than herself for marriage. Nothing less, nothing more.”
Escoffier:
“I don’t think that’s right.
The theory is more like this, from what I have read. Hypergamy is a woman’s natural (which is to say, genetically wired) preference for a higher status male—that is, higher status than herself and also higher status than the other men in her field of vision and also perhaps higher status than men she has known in the past and even (at the extremes) higher status than most men she can personally imagine meeting. That cuts across a range of possible relationships, all the way from a one night stand to marriage. In all cases, women naturally prefer the highest status man they can get. And sometimes they want so much status that they won’t settle on any man they could actually get.
“Status” has a varied meaning in this definition. Certain things correlate with high status, for instance money, prestige, social standing, etc. However a man can have all of that and still be low status because of low status intra-personal behavior (i.e., needy schlumpitude). The highest possible status male would be rich, good looking, fit, well dressed, high social cache, high prestige job (preferably one which involves risk, physical risk being better than mere monetary risk), and also extroverted, dominant, the leader of his group of friends, able to command any social situation, and so on. However, women are wired to be turned on more by the latter behavioral traits than by be the former
substantive traits. So, if you have to choose one or the other, to get women, be socially dominant and a broke societal loser rather than socially awkward and a rich societal winner. But best to be both, if possible.
As to marriage, sure women want to marry up. But this does not exhaust the effects of hypergamy. Women can marry up—both intrinsically and in their own mind—and still ditch their catch because someone “better” comes along. That is hypergamy at work.
Also, when women are pursuing short and medium term mating, hypergamy has no less force. They always prefer the most socially dominant male they can get. This is often
relative (A&B are both a little dweeby but A is more alpha than B and since I want
someone NOW I choose A) but sometimes it is more intrinsic (A&B are both a little
dweeby and even though A is a little more alpha, since I don’t have to have someone NOW, I am going to hold out for the Real Deal).
It’s not all about marriage. It’s about mate selection across the range of circumstances.
That, at any rate, is how I believe the manosphere understands “hypergamy.”
Escoffier makes an astute analysis of Hypergamy in a much broader perspective than Susan’s feminine definition-approved “researchers” are willing to recognize. On the fem-centric side we have Sue casually dismiss “Hypergamy” in this context as some fabrication of the Game-set and therefor not a legitimate analysis. A rose is a rose, and as I’ve stated in prior threads, Hypergamy is a term that should have a much broader definition when considered in context with the feminine imperative and the eminently observable feminine behaviors that manifest as a result of Hypergamy’s influence.
That the term Hypergamy should be so wantonly limited in its definition, and in such a way that it serves to deliberately confuse a better understanding of it as an evolutionary impulse on the feminine psyche, speaks volumes about the importance of maintaining its misunderstanding to the feminine imperative.
It’s almost ironic that the collective feminine ego should even need to deign to recognize Hypergamy in the terms that it is cast as in Susan’s default response. ”Hypergamy states that a woman seeks a man of higher status than herself for marriage. Nothing less, nothing more.” forces the feminine to at least begrudgingly accept that women are in fact basing their long-term commitment prospects on status (as defined by researchers), and not some ephemeral soul-mate, emotional precept. God forbid men (PhDs or otherwise) should have the temerity to extrapolate any further social, psychological or evolutionary implications that could’ve influenced that Hypergamy dynamic into existence.
While I wont argue the credentials of the researchers — I often acknowledge all of the same in other posts and comments — I will however make the point that the feminine interpretation (as is everyone’s) is subject to bias. And in this case, that bias serves the feminine imperative in keeping the definition of Hypergamy in as closed a way as possible to benefit the feminine.
In the evolving understanding of the motivators that influence inter-gender relations there are going to be terms that describe concepts. AFC’s, Alpha, Beta, Hypergamy, etc. are all defined by the concepts they represent.
’Hypergamy’ serves well in a much broader capacity, but should the feminine imperative find that broader definition threatening to its purpose it will casually dismiss it as
illegitimate. The real question then is, why would that concept be threatening to the
feminine? You can delegitimize the term, but the concept is still the operative issue.
Why is the concept of that larger scope of the term so offensive to a fem-centric society?
The Conspiracy that Wasn’t
One issue many of my critics have is that in exposing these inconsistencies, these operative social conventions and the latent purposes behind them, my writing (really most of the manosphere) seems to take on a conspiratorial tone.
I can fully appreciate this, and it might shock a few readers to know that I reject much of the popularized MRA (men’s rights activists) perspective in this respect. I agree with an MRA perspective in a rational analysis to a certain degree, but there is no grand
conspiracy, no secret mysterious cabal pushing a negative perception of masculinity —
and this is exactly why what I outline on my blog is so pervasive.
There doesn’t need to be a unitary group of ’anti-men’ bent on some melodramatic goal of world domination; because this feminized ideal is already embedded in our socialization. Fem-centrism is our collective social consciousness.
It doesn’t need a centralized directorship because the mindset is already so installed and perpetuated by society at large it’s now normalized, taken for granted and self-perpetuating. AFCs raising AFCs leads to still more AFCs. This generation doesn’t realize their own bias because it’s been standardized, encouraged and reinforced in them, and society, over the course of several generations now.
What’s to question, especially when calling attention to the feminization dynamic leads to ridicule and ostracization?
So to answer the conspiracy question; no, there is no Illuminati shadow conspiracy and that’s exactly what makes feminization the normalized and overlooked default.
The Hypergamy Conspiracy
The funny thing about regret is, it’s better to regret something you have done,
than regret something you haven’t done.
Paradox on the SoSuave forum had an interesting question after reading War Brides:
I’ve seen it mentioned here in passing but I would like to know how women handle regret.
How do they handle decisions that may affect their destiny?
Moments like:
Seeing someone on a train, bus, coffee shop, grocery store but not saying hello when the moment comes.
Meeting someone great at a party but not exchanging numbers.
Not calling back a guy
I have seen low IL (interest level) changed to high IL but do women generally waver in their interest level all of the time?
Any observational answer I could offer here is going to have to be adjusted to account for women’s inherent solipsism — everything is about her, and everything confirms her assessments as the default. As such, you have to bear in mind that regret, for women, usually begins from a point of how a missed opportunity could’ve better benefited
themselves.
The root of this is grounded in women’s constant, in-born psychological quest for
security. Hypergamy, by necessity, makes for solipsistic women in order to best preserve the survival integrity of the species. That’s not to say women can’t sublimate that impulse as necessity dictates, but just as men must sublimate their sexual imperative, women begin at a point of tempering the insecurity that results from hypergamy.
Guilt and Regret
Using hypergamy as a woman’s point of origin, this affects how women process regret. At this point I should note that guilt and regret are not cut from the same vine. You can feel guilty about something you did or didn’t do, as well as feel regret for something you did or didn’t do, but the two are not synonymous. I want to avoid that confusion here from the outset, because guilt is associated with a lingering negativity, while regret comes from different motivations. If you did something you feel guilty about, you probably regret it, but you can regret something you have no feelings of guilt about.
After you finish reading this bit check out the ’Missed Connections’ section on your areas Craig’s List. Read the differences in tone, vernacular and purpose of both men and
women lamenting a missed chance at something they hoped might develop. There’s no guilt involved in this wishful thinking, only a regret for not having taken an action.
Women’s Regret
Women’s experience of regret depends upon the degree or intensity of the encounter in relation to their own conditions. I know that sounds like psycho-babble, but let me explain. If, and to what degree, a woman experiences regret in the situations Paradox is describing, these are directly proportional to her self-worth versus the (perceived) value of the encounter.
At the risk of coming off as shallow again, the fat chick who thinks she blew a shot at a Brad Pitt will regret it more than the HB 9 who happened to lose an “average” guy’s phone number. I’m going to catch fire for this I’m sure, but it’s really an autonomous response for human beings to make subconscious comparisons and employ a natural ego preservation. While its latent psychological function is to help us learn from experience, generally regret is painful, so our natural response is to defend against it. We tend to regret not capitalizing on situations where the perceived reward value is high. The psychological buffer of course comes in rationalizing the actual value potential of that missed opportunity or minimizing the negative impact of the taken opportunity.
So the debate is really how do women in particular process this reward valuation with regard to men? Again, I’ll say it breaks down to subliminally recognizing their self-worth, modified by social affirmations and then comparing it with the value of the encounter.
Even semi-attractive women (HB 6-7) have a subconscious understanding that most inter-sexual encounters they have are mediated by their frequency — how rare was that
opportunity? Meaning if a girl is constantly reinforced with male attention (guys asking her out all the time, social media influences, etc.) the rarity of any one encounter is compared against the frequency with which guys are hitting on her. This is female Plate Theory in action. If you happen to be one among many of the throngs of her suitors she’s less likely to regret not following up with you in relation to the extraordinary (see Alpha) guy she perceives has a higher value than she’s normally used to being rewarded with.
Women and Regret
One requirement I have of most of the men (and women) I do consults with is that they read The 48 Laws of Power (The Art of Seduction is in the class syllabus as well). In the introduction author Robert Greene runs down the ethical implications of understanding and employing the various laws. If you look at the synopsis of the laws you can get an idea of how uncomfortable some of these laws will naturally make people feel. Many of these laws understandably rub the uneducated the wrong way because for the better part of our lives we’ve been taught to emulate socially acceptable mannerisms and adopt a mindset of cooperation above self interest.
Most people are conditioned to think that deliberate use of power is inherently manipulative, self-serving and sometimes evil. In context this may or may not be true, but in so demonizing even the desire to understand power, not only do we inhibit a better critical understanding of power, but we also make the uneducated more vulnerable to the use of power against them. The 49th Law being: Never educate others of the principles of power, which is itself a form of using power. Never talk about Fight Club.
I bring this up because, just as with the Laws of Power, there will be articles of Game, or foundations of inter-gender communication — complete with all of the underlying motivators — that Men (and women) will be uncomfortable accepting or employing to the point that it challenges some deep rooted emotional or ego investments. Let me be the first to establish that discomfort is part of understanding; truth is supposed to make you uncomfortable in order to inspire you to action.
I should also add here that even though you may not be comfortable in exercising a particular tactic or don’t feel confident in approaching an interpersonal situation in some way, it is still vital that you do understand the concepts and methodologies behind why those laws, principles, techniques, attitudes, etc. do work. You may have personal reasons for not wanting to involve yourself in some particular aspect of Game, but it’s imperative that you fully acknowledge the mechanics behind that aspect before you decide it’s not something you can employ. Declining to use a particular Law or aspect of Game doesn’t make you immune to the consequences of it, nor does it invalidate that aspect when
others use it for their own benefit, and potentially to your own detriment.
Half the Battle
The primary (though not exclusive) focus of my blog has been devoted to the critical analysis of the mechanics behind inter-gender dynamics, Game-practice, Game-theory, social and evolutionary psychology just to name a few. I can understand the want for practical applications of this field of study, and while in my line of work I have done my own ’field testing’ with the majority of what I explore here, I have neither the time, opportunity or resources to develop practices beyond what I offer here. At least not to the degree of which the majority of my readers are able — and that’s the good news.
“This is brilliant stuff Rollo, but how do I use this to make my life better with the next girl I sarge, etc.?”
This is a common desire from my readership, and the best I can offer is Knowing is Half the Battle. One size doesn’t fit all for everyone in Game or inter-gender relations. Anyone hawking a book giving you an instruction manual on how to have a great marriage or how to pick up chicks is still limited by their own individual experience. In other words, they’re not you.
It’s for exactly this reason I spend more time and critical thought on the foundations and functions of gender dynamism than pick up artistry. When I get associated with the “manipulative Machiavellian Game gurus” it only serves to highlight an ignorance and lack of any depth of understanding what I focus on here. Game is psychology, sociology, economics, biomechanics, evolution and politics. Game is far broader than simple tricks and techniques. And it’s exactly the latent purpose of these applications (PUArtistry) and the mechanics behind their workings that threatens the ego-investments of those who’s feminized interests would rather see them marginalized and passed off as folly, or
usefully ridiculed to shame the curious for fear that the underpinnings might be exposed.
Head in the Sand
Sweetening the poison doesn’t make it any less deadly.
I can remember a time in my mid-20s working as a stage tech for a casino cabaret show. The magic act I set up and struck every night involved a Bengal tiger and a black panther. Both of them were professionally handled by trainers, but even though they seemed the most docile of animals I knew they had the potential to seriously fuck me up under the wrong set of circumstances.
The trainers would keep them at distance from the rest of the cast and crew, only myself and one other tech were able to get close since we were the ones wheeling them out in special cages at their particular point in the show. One trainer told me, “the moment you think of them as pets is the moment they’ll go feral on you.” They would play with these wild animals, and they seemed to have a special connection (almost like a pet), but when you watched them eat, you knew what they were capable of.
I learned a valuable lesson from this when one night I was wheeling the panther out to the curtain. She was in what was basically a reinforced acrylic aquarium on casters with a velvet cloth draped over it. A few minutes before my cue I’d thought the drape was falling to one side and lifted it to even it out. It was then that I was face to face with this “pet” in nothing but faint stage lights and about 4 inches of transparent acrylic between us. She looked at me with those yellow-green eyes and gave me a very low, almost muted growl and flashed just enough of her teeth to let me know this was not a “pet”.
It’s a mistake (and sometimes a fatal one) to ignore what you know is just under the
surface. It’s comforting to believe that you’ve got a special connection, and while the conditions are right, you’ll preserve a relationship based on mutual trust and shared affinity. The flaw is in believing that trust, and kinship is unconditional; that the underlying feral motivators are subdued to the point of being inconsequential. It may be that you do have a special bond that goes beyond just the physical, but that relationship is still founded on physical rules that constantly test and influence that individual.
You know better, but the desire for that connection is so strong that you marginalize the natural impulses into feel-good rationalizations. Every divorced man I know has uttered some variation of “I never thought she was capable of this.” In their comfort they
wondered how they dropped the ball, especially after having played by the rules for so long. Some knew about Hypergamy, others made it their “pet”, only their beautiful panther went feral.
Play My Game
It is a far healthier approach to accept the laws of power, the laws of Game, red pill awareness, Hypergamy, etc. and fashion a life around an understanding of them than to convince oneself that they are an exception to them.
There are those who seek power by changing the game — by lowering the basketball hoops in order to better shoot a basket — but in ’leveling the playing field’ they only succeed in changing the nature of the competition to better suit their individual abilities, neither improving the game nor themselves. The temporary change of rules only serves their inadequacies in that game.
Then there are those who accept the game for what it is, they understand it and they master it (or at least attempt to do so). They understand the need for adversity and the benefits it gives them when they reach the next level of mastering the game — not only in technique, but from the confidence this genuinely and verifiably confers.
Don’t wish things were easier, wish you were better.
It’s the aberration who seeks to legitimize her cheating at the game as the new way the game should be played. Shoot the arrow, paint the target around it, and you’ll always get a bullseye.