Amongst some in the manosphere, there seems to be this prevailing notion that the problems between the sexes can be boiled down to the notion that men are good, women bad. I personally do not subscribe to this view as I believe that while Feminism has corrupted the average woman, modern masculinity is nothing to write home about. In my previous post, I argued that in my experience women seem to have more "balls" than men, and that given their hypergamous nature this makes many men unattractive to them. A patient came in the other day who illustrated this phenomenon quite clearly.
(I've changed the details of the patient and her story to protect her privacy but the details are true to the best of my recollection.)
Patient: Doctor, I wonder if I could see someone because I'm suffering from quite a bit of anxiety.
Me: Can I ask what is going on?
P: I'm stressed.
M: What is causing you stress?
P: I'm having problems with my boyfriend.
M: What sort of problems?
P: We argue all the time, over everything.
M: What do you argue about?
P: Money mainly. He can't seem to hold down a job and whatever job he does get he seems to be exploited by his employer. I mean he is never able to save any money and he works incredible hours but he spends all his money on alcohol and trinkets and I still end up having to give him money for his lunch.
M: His lunch?
P: He rings me up from work stating that he has nothing to eat. I'm mean, can't he pack a sandwich or just buy something? He rings me up complaining that he is so thirsty from work yet he won't take a water bottle with him. He complains all the time about stupid little things and seems to want me to tell him how to fix them. It's like he is a little kid and I have to pack his school lunch.
M: Does he help around the house?
P: He leaves his stuff laying around. He won't wash the dishes. If he is at home during the day he won't lift a finger and I have to do everything. I have to nag him to do anything and I'm beginning to sound like my mother and I hate it. I don't want to be a nag.
M: Do you work?
P: Yes, I do. I work as (uncredentialed clerical work) and work long hours as well. But I'm trying to pay off a house. I bought a property before I met him and put tenants in it. They can help me pay it off. It annoys me that my partner is not contributing. All I want is for him to be able to put some money away so that when we get married we can have some furniture and a stable financial future together, but he just seems to blow all his money and it's like I'm supporting him.
M: It's tough out there in the job market.
P: Yeah, I know. But he turns up late for work and can't seem to organise himself while he is over there. (She lists a litany of examples of manifest imbecility.)
M: Do you sleep at night?
P: I have a very broken sleep. I used to sleep very well but lately I wake up at two in the morning and can't fall back asleep. I lay awake in bed thinking of our future. I don't want to be poor and struggling for the rest of my life.
M: Are you intimate with your partner?
P: No, and that's weird, because I've always had a high sex drive. I just don't feel like doing it anymore. He gets angry about it. Then we end up in a big shouting match. It's like I'm shouting with another girl. He's always making excuses and blames me for everything.
M: Blames you?
P: Yes, he says that I want too much. That I'm too demanding. Look, he was working in sales and his boss was exploiting him. I told him to find another job which he did. When he lost that job he blamed me saying that he should have stayed in his first job. Everything is my fault and he never takes responsibility for anything.
M: (I'd been "reading" the patient whilst she was talking. She was clearly a naturally intelligent aspirational woman who was tough). Perhaps you are being too tough on him. I reckon your pretty strong willed and can be demanding.
P: (Looks surprised!) Maybe, but I only want what my mother has. My father was always able to keep down a job. He's always fixing things up around the house and helps my mum. He never argues like a woman with my mother. When my mother starts yelling at him he tells her to shut up and walks away. When my mother cools down then he will talk to her.
M: What does your father think of your boyfriend?
P: He doesn't like him. He thinks he is a loser.
M: What do you think is the main problem then in your relationship?
P: Look doctor, I'm sick of being the man in the relationship. It's like I'm wearing the pants and I don't like it. It may sound old-fashioned but I want a man who can carry me to bed. Not the other way around.
M: It looks like your relationship is in serious trouble, why are you staying?
P: Guilt. He blames me for everything, he blames all his failures on me and perhaps I'm doing something wrong. I want to speak to someone to see if I need to change or if something can be done.
M: I see. Look, I only have your version of events and not his, and it may be that you really are quite a demanding woman but it does appear that your relationship is in serious trouble and that you are quite stressed. I'll refer you to Dr X for some counseling, I think you should not make any major decisions until you've seen Dr X. He might be able to speak to both of you.
P: Do you think there is something wrong with me Doctor? Do you think I'm too demanding?
M: Like I said, I only have your version of events. But based upon my brief impression of you and your history I think you're tough but I don't think your demands are unreasonable. Your obviously stressed because you're in an unhappy relationship. Your looking for a man to look after you and challenge you and if necessary put you in your place and your current man isn't doing that.
P: Yes, Yes!
M: Look, I'm a bit of a sexist pig and believe that man needs to know how to manage his woman and not tolerate any disrespect. It's not that I want dominate women or think that they're inferior, it's just that when a woman is able to dominate her man she becomes profoundly unhappy.(Starts staring at me with puppy dog eyes) Once again, I only have your version of events but you seem to be self disciplined and have got your act together; your man doesn't. I'd still want to hear your partner's side of the story and I don't think you should make any decisions till you see Dr X. But that's my personal opinion.
P: (Puppy dog eyes) Are you married Doctor?
M: Unfortunately for you, yes.
P: (Smiles)
I have these type of consultations roughly twice a week. The theme is the same. Competent woman, loser man, unhappy relationship.
Many in the manosphere would view this woman as a demanding bitch. I don't. She would be a good modern fit for Proverbs 31:10-31. She has independently, on a low income, saved money and bought herself a house, put tenants in it and has a long term plan for the future. She is keeping down a job and has been able to organise her own affairs. She wants a stable future and does not want to live in poverty. By the way, I'd estimate her BMI at about 22. Such a woman is percieved as a threat to Western Civilisation by the manosphere. Facepalm.
On the other hand, her boyfriend, who can't keep down a job, is poorly organised and pathetic and relies on his wife for everything is paraded as some form of victim of modern Western Civilisation by the manosphere. Houston, I think we have a problem.
Now, it may be my opinion doesn't really matter here, but what I think is most telling is the opinion of her father, who seems to have his shit together. He thinks his potential son-in-law is a failure as well. I feel that the father's opinion may have some validity.
The manosphere has quite rightly denounced the corruption of women by feminism but what it has been unable see is the failure in modern masculinity. Roosh and Roissy may get lots of lays but they would have hardly been though of examples of masculinity either in Roman, Greek or Victorian times. Hedonism was always the "soft" option of manhood. And the reality today is that many men are soft. Not so much physically as in character. Women are far "harder" today and more self disciplined. Making women "softer" may restore some of their femininity but it no way guarantees the masculinity of men. Taking away a woman's rights does not give a man alpha qualities.
91 comments:
Sometimes it's good to step away from the red kool aid the "manosphere" (I hate that term. Sounds like a gay sex toy) is drinking and take a good look at the supposedly stronger sex.
My cousin was knocked up by white "man" who I would describe accurately as a hipster post-masculine weenie. My father's assessment of him is even harsher ("What does he bring to the table besides his empty stomach?"). He has no job and hasn't had any type of "work" for the past seven years.
How do they get by? My aunt, who dearly loves her grand daughter and is a strongly pro-life Catholic. But she just goes along with it. If it weren't for my aunt, my niece and cousin would probably be drifting from handout to handout and the "father" wouldn't be a part of their lives.
Seriously. This guy is so chestless that if you didn't know any better you'd think he's the girl's older brother.
That said, I've known couples where I was OK with the woman being the stronger half. But that's because in all those cases, the husband/bf was physically disabled or terminally ill.
There are problems with the job market, with feminism tainting the women and a host of other issues affecting Western civilization.
Yet somehow men manage to find stable jobs, marry attractive chaste women, stay married, and raise decent kids. It's certainly a lot harder to do than it was in the 1950's but it's quite possible.
These manosphere types do a great service by pointing out problems and teaching game, but man, they sound depressing sometimes.
My reading of this is that if the guys is such a loser, she must have chosen him because he was sexier than the competition.
But now she's kind of lost respect for him because he hasn't been able to grow up and add traditional alpha traits to his "sneaky fucker" game.
In some respects she seems responsible, but in others, like her choice of men, she is not.
I call it the "Androsphere"
She would be a good modern fit for Proverbs 31:10-31. She has independently, on a low income, saved money and bought herself a house, put tenants in it and has a long term plan for the future. She is keeping down a job and has been able to organise her own affairs. She wants a stable future and does not want to live in poverty. By the way, I'd estimate her BMI at about 22
Prize catch. Why is she DATING A JERK??????? That, sir, is the basic gripe of the manosphere. Women like her PASS BY good men, men who live much the same way she does, and go for JERKS. LOSERS. SCOUNDRELS. While legions of good men suffer alone.
Your interviews do not disprove the primary clains manosphere, they CONFIRM those claims.
That's the problem Thursday.
Sneaky fucker gets into their pants but it works only on the short term.
Status, sexiness, charisma are all important for initial attraction but life competency seems to be the alpha trait that is fundamental to long term marital success.
Prince Charles was high on the social scale but it did not stop Diana from bonking with an Army officer, by all accounts he is a practical doofus.
Van rooinek
Because all of those "good men" have zero sex appeal. They are the equivalent of good worker fat chicks.
Having a regular paycheck makes you a good provider, not sexually attractive.
The ideal man has charm and an decent income.
Sounds like liberation 1960's style.
“Our cultural revolution has been made from the top, rather than the bottom. It is anti-political, a revolution of the rich by which they have lowered the pressure of inherited communal purpose on themselves.” [Rieff 1966]
Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in 'After Virtue' 2007 ed.
"In The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) and also in To My Fellow Teachers (1975) Philip Rieff has documented with devastating insight a number of the ways in which truth has been displaced as a value and replaced by psychological effectiveness." p.30
Have you considered that most of your examples are fucked up because fucked up people go to therapists?
Especially women, what man is going to go to a therapist to complain about a woman? The most bitching a man will do about a woman is sitting around watching the game and saying, "bitches be crazy."
"The ideal man has charm and an decent income."
There are not enough of these men to go around.
I think the episode of "The Mindy Project" was a very good look at modern dating. Mindy only wants to date perfect men. Perfect men make it clear that they will fuck her until she is too old to be worth fucking but won't commit to her. They also make it clear that her being a doctor doesn't increase her mating value. Despite knowing her decisions are destructive she continues them. Even when the honest male doctor tells her to loosen up her hypergamy requirements and just try to find a masculine man that would make a good husband she can't even be self aware enough to understand him.
I've seen plenty of this anecdotally - but you also see the reverse of substance-addicted and unproductive young women in huge numbers. Which makes it hard for me to make a society-wide judgment one way or the other. There might be a class dimension that has so far escaped examination.
In any case, shiftless men and more hardworking, competent mates have existed in the cultural consciousness for a long time - Marmeladov and Katerina in Crime and Punishment come to mind.
In fairness I suppose I am contributing to this trend as a mostly depressed and unmotivated young man.
Good post.
I think that responsible people tend to attract irresponsible ones, and the reverse is true as well...a responsible person enjoys the free nature of the irresponsible one. And of course the irresponsible party needs a meal ticket. They need each other.
And, as mentioned above, few self-respecting men goes to therapy. So a Doc will primarily see women in this dynamic.
"Have you considered that most of your examples are fucked up because fucked up people go to therapists?
Especially women, what man is going to go to a therapist to complain about a woman?"
One that wants to be blamed to an extent he knows isn't just.
1/ Not all male blogs, criticizing feminism, belong to the “manosphere”. In fact, the real cultural criticism upon feminism requires an intellectual capacity that most of the “manos” do not have.
2/ The specific story told here could easily occurred in the Fifties (before Betty Friedan). There always were exceptions to a rule, and therefore there were always emotional unstable men who could not easily fit in a relationship.
3/ As David Hume did to sustain his hyper-subjective moral view, perhaps you are grabbing a extraordinary case to justify the mainstream feminist view.
@Anon
Have you considered that most of your examples are fucked up because fucked up people go to therapists?
There are a lot of "fucked up" people in the world. A lot of people present with their complaint ultimately being psychosomatic. Chest pain and bowel cramps are a common example. It's only after we rule out organic disease that psychiatric disease is considered.
BTW, she didn't come to see me to complain about her man. She wanted something to help her with her stress. It was my probing which elucidated that her relationship was the main stressor.
It's true, most men do not complain about their partners, though a fair few do.
@Gattopardo
Maybe it is my practice, but I rarely if ever see the female equivalent of the loser male. If they are out there I certainly don't run into them often.
Orlando.
No there are many critics of feminism outside of the manosphere, and yes, a lot of manosphere criticism is shallow.
The specific story told here could easily occurred in the Fifties (before Betty Friedan)
That's my point entirely. Women were still quite restricted in the 50's and loser men like this one weren't automatically elevated in desirability by an artificially elevated social status.
perhaps you are grabbing a extraordinary case to justify the mainstream feminist view.
She isn't that extraordinary. The reason I presented her story is because it is so typical of the ones I hear and see at work.
@Thursday and Van Rooinek
This girl had been out with jerks before who "used her like a piece of meat", she was looking for someone different and chose this "nice guy". She was deliberately trying to avoid jerks.
Feminism has damaged both women AND men in this day and age. We've got the masculinization of women on one side and emasculation of men on the other. So it's no wonder why a lot of guys are being seen as 'wimpy' and inadequate in relationships.
Men are constantly being told these days to get in touch with their feeeeelings and get in touch with their 'feminine side', whilst simultaneously being told to 'man-up'. It's nothing but a bombardment of mix-messages and confusion, which has led to all the frustration between men & women in the modern age.
A lot of this has been pointed out in the Manosphere and I think one of the important things the Manosphere teaches people is to recognise this problem. The next step once you've become 'aware'/taken-the-red-pill is to then improve yourself and undo all the damage feminist teaching has done to you. One example would be for a men to become more masculine and for women to relearn how to become more feminine, so that each gender is effectively polarized.
"This girl had been out with jerks before who "used her like a piece of meat", she was looking for someone different and chose this "nice guy". She was deliberately trying to avoid jerks."
Well there you go. The equivalent of a (former) slut is a loser male. They both have equal low long-term mate value, as a female's long term mate value is determined by chastity and a man's long term mate value is determined by provisioning ability. The are each others equivalent.
"Well there you go. The equivalent of a (former) slut is a loser male. They both have equal low long-term mate value, as a female's long term mate value is [to a great extent -AC] determined by chastity and a man's long term mate value is [to a large extent -AC] determined by provisioning ability. The are each others equivalent."
Could have worked anyway, but it was probably even more important in this case that they stay out of each other's pants before marriage and get community support for that union (full parental approval and blessing, etc.). Like a probationary period for him to get his vocation in gear and her to practice and prove her restraint.
Yeah, I know the feeling... There seem to be a lot of guys looking for a mother rather than a wife, and that is a big turn-off. I was forced into the leadership role in my marriage and it was exhausting and uncomfortable.
I think you are right though, about men needing to find their balls. There has to be some balance to this.
@van Rooinek
My gripe is that the decent guys ran away from me! At that was left were losers like the guy described here! Yeah, I wasn't perfect, but like those 'nice guys', I had the potential there.
This woman came to you feeling stressed out. You determined that the main stressor is the relationship. But were you really paying attention? Her primary complaint in the relationship is that her boyfriend blames everything on her and takes no responsibility. Her entire conversation with you was centered around blaming everything on him and taking no responsibility for the relationship problems.
Your response was to say you only have one side of the story instead of trying to get her to examine her own behavior. When you told her that you think she's a strong woman and has her act together and her boyfriend doesn't, you may well be validating her pathology. When seeing only one person in a relationship the therapist should not validate the actions of that person when they are demeaning or degrading the other partner. You have now made Dr. X's job 10 times more difficult. Instead of allowing her to focus the seesion on what HE is doing wrong, you should have focused on what SHE could do differently.
If this girl wants dependability and a good future, why didn't she lavish her 22 bmi attention on some virginal computer programmer?
If her current boyfriend came to you in 20 years complaining of stress because he was broke and homeless and described to you how he can't keep a job because he's totally undependable and irresponsible, what would you say? Would he deserve your pity and rationalizations about the evils of hard work?
This woman made her bed and now she's sleeping in it. There are trade offs in life. You want sexy now? Don't be surprised when you have to pay for it later.
Men haven't changed that much, it's just that the dregs are getting the rewards now. It wasn't that young men were that much more masculine or "sexy" in the past, it was that promiscuity was shunned. It was that parents had a stronger influence on a young woman's romantic life. And it was a different culture with different expectations of what life was supposed to be.
There are plenty of dependable, hard working guys around. They just aren't the ones getting laid. Complaining that they aren't "sexy" enough is nonsense. The kind of sexy that women look for these days has taken on the proportions of caricature. That's the real problem.
These days, men make the choice early, because sex happens earlier. Either you become a "bad boy" and score when it matters: in high school, or you take the "good" path and suffer. The former end up losers in the long run but the latter lose out when it matters most. It's a choice that women force on men today, whether consciously or not.
"Maybe it is my practice, but I rarely if ever see the female equivalent of the loser male."
There are plenty of them. Try putting out a craigslist add for a low rent apartment and see the women who show up.
A lot of loser women trade sex for support. If a woman is unemployed she need only find a boyfriend to move in with.
"She was deliberately trying to avoid jerks."
My local IT department is chock full of high earning single provider males. If she was really looking to get a nice guy its very very simple.
S.P.,
In large parts of today's education and employment system, the playing field has not been leveled, but tilted in favor of females. A simple example is the replacement of high-stakes testing by incremental assessment favoring diligence. Another is the displacement of logic by rhetoric (I've taught graduate seminars for a quarter century, which means my anecdotes begin to resemble data).
I don't mean to defend the slackers, and in some ways it's disgraceful how quickly men caved in and withdrew, but you're entirely missing one fact about the present system (at least in the U.S.A.) when you note the aggressiveness and courage of females. A female can talk, long, loud, and publicly, about the superiority of females and the absurd deficiencies of men, and nothing happens to her . In fact she gets a "you go, girl," smiles, and applause. If a man attempted to answer these charges with equivalent brio, or, heaven forfend, made similar charges himself, he would likely loose his job.
Being repeatedly punched in the face while one's hands are tied tends to make one loose interest in life. Or at least in fighting.
At the risk of oversimplifying a complicated (and disastrous) state of affairs, I think the root cause of the modern spineless man-boy will be found in the fathers (and grandfathers) of those spineless man-boys. One is born male; one is made into a man. One is made into a man by other men, most especially one's father. If he is absent, or ejected, or a spineless man-boy himself, it's not surprising that one grows up to be a weenie with a penis. Being surrounded by ranting harpies doesn't help, either.
An outstanding post and some very good comments.
@TDOM. You make an excellent point. Until the patient takes responsibility for her contributions to the situation, she'll stay stuck. In fact, even if she leaves her present boyfriend, her odds are strong of finding herself in a similar situation with the next (and so on) boyfriend(s) until she "owns" her role and contribution to it. What BENEFITS is she getting from this guy's bad behavior that keeps her in the relationship? Does it give her a sense of power or control? Does she receive a Florence Nightingale-type satisfaction? What childhood or adolescent PATTERNS is s/he trying to repeat through choosing and staying with this loser guy?
But it also seems like the patient had one of those "a-ha moments" of insight in SocPath's office. She found a doctor who could relate to her and describe to her what a more positive relationship looked like. Such rare moments of clarity, of what the end-state should look like, are essential to her healing. Rather than retard her progress, Dr. SocPath likely motivated it. It sounds to me like she's now more willing to call Dr. X and pursue the next steps (than had Dr. SocPath not elaborated as he did). Now seeing more clearly what she wants, she may be more willing to pursue the self-reflection "medicine" (articulated above) which is essential to overcoming her contribution to the situation.
First, a thousand times AMEN! Roissy would be seen as an effeminate loser. The praise that is heaped on him _boggles my mind_. Sure you'd invite him to the party at the senate and enjoy the stories but he'd never get into all the right places.
Second, I noticed you used "wife" and "boyfriend" and "future husband". This is a problem. They aren't all the same thing. Sleeping with random possible husband is only going to harm her long term. Is this something you counsel against? Or does that just send people into a rage?
Van Roirk notes (properly) that this behavior is a secondary concern of the androsphere. Why on earth is she attached to this guy? What drives that? Why in God's name hasn't her father cut her off for behaving in that way?
As to the fellow in question, there may be something to his complaint. That is, women tend to offer "avoidence" advice that is deadly to male careers. My own wife does it and I lap it up when I'm sitting down with my cocktail because it is pleasant. I then go to work and DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE. The modern man isn't told often to not, or at least be very careful with, following feminine advice.
Chris' comments are also useful. I believe there is something to be said about her potentially former slutiness and her now being tasked to a loser.
"If this girl wants dependability and a good future, why didn't she lavish her 22 bmi attention on some virginal [ED: and presumably unattractive] computer programmer?"
This though is an example of where the androsphere goes wrong. That's the equivalent of saying that you should be attracted by an overweight woman. She wants charm and sexiness. You want household competence and sexiness. I'd say both desires are normal and natural and the insistence that women should date people that are unattractive is silly.
"When you told her that you think she's a strong woman and has her act together and her boyfriend doesn't, you may well be validating her pathology"
That is not all he said. I suggest your reread what he wrote.
First, a thousand times AMEN! Roissy would be seen as an effeminate loser. The praise that is heaped on him _boggles my mind_. Sure you'd invite him to the party at the senate and enjoy the stories but he'd never get into all the right places.
Second, I noticed you used "wife" and "boyfriend" and "future husband". This is a problem. They aren't all the same thing. Sleeping with random possible husband is only going to harm her long term. Is this something you counsel against? Or does that just send people into a rage?
Van Roirk notes (properly) that this behavior is a secondary concern of the androsphere. Why on earth is she attached to this guy? What drives that? Why in God's name hasn't her father cut her off for behaving in that way?
As to the fellow in question, there may be something to his complaint. That is, women tend to offer "avoidence" advice that is deadly to male careers. My own wife does it and I lap it up when I'm sitting down with my cocktail because it is pleasant. I then go to work and DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE. The modern man isn't told often to not, or at least be very careful with, following feminine advice.
Chris' comments are also useful. I believe there is something to be said about her potentially former slutiness and her now being tasked to a loser.
"If this girl wants dependability and a good future, why didn't she lavish her 22 bmi attention on some virginal [ED: and presumably unattractive] computer programmer?"
This though is an example of where the androsphere goes wrong. That's the equivalent of saying that you should be attracted by an overweight woman. She wants charm and sexiness. You want household competence and sexiness. I'd say both desires are normal and natural and the insistence that women should date people that are unattractive is silly.
"When you told her that you think she's a strong woman and has her act together and her boyfriend doesn't, you may well be validating her pathology"
That is not all he said. I suggest your reread what he wrote.
She was deliberately trying to avoid jerks.
And yet somehow she ended up with another jerk. How'd that happen?
And yet somehow she ended up with another jerk. How'd that happen?
Probably went for the sex too early in the process. The problem is that attraction triggers don't really change, no matter how much one might want them to. This is why Christian men and 'nerds' need Game.
@Thursday.
I didn't go into much detail of how they met but CL's explanation is similar to what other women have told me. They pair up way too early. The current dating environment gives no time for character assessment. Couples hop into the sack together today before they really know each other. Most people are terrible judges of character and get it wrong most of the time. Waiting to have sex just doesn't happen much anymore here in Australia and thus peoples assessment of their potential mate is very superficial.
@GKC
Roissy deserves praise for being the most articulate spokesman of game and for his psychological insights. I've said this before and I'll say it again, he smarter than all the psychiatrists or psychologists that I have men. We are talking professorial quality here. No shit.
It's his hedonistic philosophy which renders him offensive to the Christian community, not his insights into female nature. Ultimately its this "pleasure philosophy" which undercuts his conception of masculinity. His philosophy is more that of a Muslim sultan more than a Christian warrior king. In the end he becomes "soft".
insistence that women should date people that are unattractive is silly
Bingo. Women want nice and sexy. Nice alone does not cut the mustard.
JMSmith
A female can talk, long, loud, and publicly, about the superiority of females and the absurd deficiencies of men, and nothing happens to her . In fact she gets a "you go, girl," smiles, and applause.
I've become much more sexist, even amongst the PC crowd, (much to their glee) The way to attack the PC crowd is to come off confident and unapologetic instead of a whiney loser complaining about your victimhood status.
With all due respect. American men seem to have "caved in" far more than Australian men have. David Collard has commented on this as well.
I think the root cause of the modern spineless man-boy will be found in the fathers (and grandfathers) of those spineless man-boys.
Personally, I think the problem lays in the embrace of ascetic Christianity and its bastard child "the romantic movement" which stripped sexuality from love, and the second element is pussy worship.
i.e hedonism. The romantic movement pedastalises women and creates a culture of deference. It lets women dictate the terms of relationship. Feminism tell women what terms to dictate. The desire for poon makes it all happen.
America is probably the most Christian country in the world at the moment. An perhaps one of the reasons American males have caved in so much is because of their embrace of "Romantic Christianity" with its implicit pedestalisation of women.
The other problem is that hendonism results in us valuing our comforts more than our principles. Mencken and Jefferson both understood that liberty and manhood was depended on men possessing a capacity to do without and endure hardships. The college professor would rather keep his job and kiss the feminist beast's hairy arse rather than suffer on principle. It's a hard teaching but character is the foundation of liberty.
As for my patient, she appeared more non virginal rather than slutty. It did not appear that she was one of those who "embraced her sexuality", rather she appeared to be a girl who dabbled a bit in order to find a mate. She was actually trying to "improve" loser boy. She wanted to make the relationship work. Her stress was more a result of the conflict between her duty to her man and his inability to satisfy her on some many psychological levels. The question that needs to be asked is, "Are her demands reasonable?" I thought they were.
@mnl
Most girls hate being single and want to pair up with their best available mate. The reason why many women want to "change men" is because women are prepared to settle with suboptimal-but-with -potential. The changing is an attempt to improve them to their satisfaction. He's probably a nice enough guy and she probably glossed over his faults or thought she could change him into what she thought is a worthy husband. But this approach immediately sabotages the relationship because by implication it means that she wears the pants. Women hate wearing the pants.
I'm not a big believer in self reflection. Most people want practical advice on how to improve. Women are very poor at recognising the causes of their emotional states and quite happy to take mainstream advice in order to fix their problems, even if it does not gel with their practical experiences.
I had a woman the other day tell me how she gets horny when she reads 50 shades of grey but as soon as her husband steps into the room she loses all interest. The standard clinical response to a lack of libidio in medicine is to look at her hormones where clearly in this instance the woman has the libidinous potential just not with her husband. There is nothing wrong with her hormones.
But when you get into the dynamics of the relationship you see that she is highly attractive and competent and he has let himself go and has become vulgar. Relationship dynamics matter more than hormones.
I've actually had women ask me for "Game" resources to give to their husbands. There are a lot of wimpy men out there. Nothing, absolutely nothing, turns a woman off more than a man begging for sex.
Bingo. I've had several women asking me for "Game" resources to give to their husbands. The implication of this is not that they want to leave their husbands, it's that they want their husbands to be more manly.
GK Chesterton,
Regarding the truth value of this story, the Social Pathologist wrote this before the dialogue:
(I've changed the details of the patient and her story to protect her privacy but the details are true to the best of my recollection.)
The notion that average men need to also be sexy because that's what you expect of a woman is simplistic and dismissive. Men in the past were not more charismatic or better with women, their social position was one of superiority, based on a cultural respect for masculine traits.
Even average men could expect attention from women, whether they had any skills at seduction or not. Most times the women would do most of what would pass for seduction themselves. Nowadays, because women are free from having to worry about the future they have collectively bid up the price of their attentions, to the point where its not enough to have a good character and a good future. Actually those things are more a detriment to your ability to succeed with women now because it puts you in the category of a boring square.
What hot women in their prime want now are douchebags, and all this watered down bloodless narnying about being sexy is bullshit. Nerds are not sexy because they don't get any attention.
Sure, but this is mostly stating what's obvious. Women want the full package: charm/sexiness and masculine achievement/responsibility. A mix of alpha and beta qualities. That's plainly obvious.
The problem is that men like this are not common and the truth is that they never have been common. The ancien regime emphasized the beta qualities over the alpha ones by means of the social expectations/restrictions on female achievement, making women more reliant on beta qualities in mate selection. Many of them ended up married to men who were not attractive to them due to not having sufficient alpha qualities, and in some cases to men who had good beta qualities on paper but nevertheless fared poorly (turned into louts, etc.). Today, women are not as reliant on betaness, and, being free to choose, want an attractive and competent mate -- and there are simply not very many of these men.
I don't think this is new, however, as I state above. For generations, perhaps thousands of years now, men have not had to present like this (both sexy and successful) simply to mate effectively. It's true that the relatively few men who had this mix of qualities were the ones who had the best mating opportunities (unsurprisingly), but it's not been the case that having both of these was required to mate effectively. Today, it is the case, and most men just are not going to make that cut.
Men who are career competent and successful in that area can still benefit from upping their game or masculinity or whatever -- whatever makes women in your social circle attracted to men. But on a macro level that isn't going to be a real solution to the situation we see emerging, because most men aren't going to make this cut.
Continued in next post.
The impact of this differs substantially by social class, at least in the United States.
In the United States, the highest educated social class is mating fairly effectively based on assortative mating. But, and I emphasize this, a main part of this is that women in this group are generally selecting mates based more on beta success/responsibility factors than on alpha sexiness factors, across the board. There is a mercenary character to some of the marriages, and a dull one to others, and in some ways many of these marriages resemble those of the 50s (this has been remarked in commentary about them as well), although the women in them are much more educated and many of them have careers which rival or even exceed those of their husbands. Affairs are rife in this group, but divorce is not common. Costs too much in terms of lifestyle for most of them and is bad for the kids. Again probably not so different from 50s sytle.
Below this, you see things basically falling apart, and to a greater degree the further down you go. The main reason for this is twofold. The first is that the further down the pole you go, the less likely a woman is to choose her mates with an emphasis on the beta side rather than the alpha side. There's poorer decisionmaking and judgment in general, and more thugspawn as a result. The second reason, which is closely related to the first, is that, again, the further down you go, the fewer guys there are who have significantly successful beta aspects, so that even if women wanted to choose on this basis, the pickins are slim, so to speak. Marriage in these social classes seems pretty much doomed to a slow death, it seems to me, for these two reasons, both of which are quite change resistant.
Continued in next post
The phenomenon we see described in the manosphere about successful IT geeks having trouble with girls is not a fake problem generally falls into the category of people who are below the most educated demographic above (who generally have high marriage rates and not problems finding mates) but above the lower class demographic as well. They are in the shrinking middle.
In the shrinking middle, you have a fast deteriorating situation when it comes to mate finding. Again, this is to some degree based on what is happening economically and socially in this group. In general, it is in this group that the women tend to want a balanced mix of alpha and beta (whereas in the higher group it's leaning beta, while in the lower it's leaning alpha) -- sexiness and success, in other words. And this is hard to come by, because it's a mix that isn't very common in men. So what we see is that marriage is quickly eroding in this group as the women are becoming as advanced if not more so in terms of success as the men are, but want an alpha/beta mix for a mate, and simply can't find the guys -- because very few of them, in fact, exist. They tend to be either more sexy than successful, or more successful than sexy, bit not "Goldilocks" men, as it were.
Yes, hypergamy feeds into this as well, but the odd thing is that the most educated women, who are in the smallest hypergamy pool, are not having issues finding mates. It's the women in the next tier or two below them who are.
This has to do with mate selection preferences. All women have hypergamy to some degree. The difference, however, between social classes and marriage/divorce rates is how these preferences are calibrated. A short fat PhD or lawyer or doctor with no social charm isn't going to fare well even in this set, that's true. But the degree of sexiness needed to mate effectively and well in this group is less because the women are demanding less of it than their sisters are on the middle and lower floors of the same building (just as the men in this group also are demanding less "sexy" from the women in this group as compared with the men of the floors below). There is a greater emphasis in this group on other qualities, and this is not replicated down the foodchain, even in the group most immediately below, to the same degree.
Continued in next post
So from my perspective the issue is that men need to (1) become a part of that top group (and that's going to be limited by some things like raw intellect, drive, ambition and stuff like that or (2) if they are not in that top group but in the next tier or two down from there really strive to become the best mix of alpha and beta that they can, and try to make the best of it, knowing that a good number of them will also be capped out in this (i.e., neither very successful for their tier nor very sexy) and may need to settle for a woman who is also less successful and less sexy in their tier band.
Which brings me back to the successful IT workers who can't get a date. I think that they probably can do, but not with the women they want to have a date with. That's because they want a higher level of sexy than they are offering, most likely, when in their tier women are looking for an alpha/beta balance more than women are in the upper tier. So, be more sexy or, failing that, aim a bit lower.
And a final point to clarify -- in the upper educated tier, it isn't as if sexy is unimportant. Again, truly homely people in this group will still have an issue, as will the socially retrograde folks. But it's the case that by and large these long term married high educated couples are very average in their degree of overall attraction/sexiness in an objective sense -- it's clear that while their mate selection criteria excluded the most homely and socially inept, beyond that it wasn't a huge part of the selection mix -- at least not when compared with the next tier down where you see, say, nurses paired with dominant/sexy firemen or tradesmen -- men who are, in other words, more dominant/sexy on the alpha scale than most of the the men in the upper educated tier, yet the men in the upper educated tier who are more beta are still getting married at higher rates and divorced at lower ones than these guys are generally speaking. SO, female mate selection criteria matters, and it differs by education class. You need to understand, as a guy, what set you are in, and present accordingly, if you want to mate effectively. Knowledge is power.
End.
Yeah, excellent comment Brendan. But there is still one thing to consider. No matter how good men's knowledge gets on the subject the fact is that women won't settle on a one to one value basis until they have spent at least some of their prime years getting soiled by alphas they fancy they could try to keep, or just because they're having "fun". Your average "7" computer nerd with some sense of how to treat a girl (like shit) to peak her interest still isn't getting her until she's sure she's exhausted all the other options.
It's glib to just remind men that "well, women want both, sexy and dependable so just be that!". They do, after they've exhausted all the more alluring options.
Probably went for the sex too early in the process.
So basically I was right. You don't hop in the sack right away with a guy you're not attracted to. So much for trying to avoid jerks.
Brenden:
RE: Educated women getting married at higher rates
IIRC, Mark Richardson at Oz Conservative has some data that about 20% of well educated women don't marry and an even larger % don't have children. This is partially mitigated by guys in the top tier mating down in terms of social class. But there is a large disconnect between the sexes even in the top tier, driven, I would assume by hypergamy.
What I think is happening is the massive disfunction at the bottom (and creeping up into the middle) is disguising the problems at the top. Women at the top really are pricing themselves out of the marriage market, but we think they're doing great because at least they aren't becoming single moms like those at the bottom.
Thursday --
That's true, but 80% marriage rate is pretty good given a low divorce rate. The rate of kids tends to be low -- many have one child. It's how it goes. But the topic here was men finding mates or being available as mates to women -- 80% is pretty good, I think.
@Brendan
There is a mercenary character to some of the marriages, and a dull one to others, and in some ways many of these marriages resemble those of the 50s
I agree. Rational calculation becomes more relevant in decisions as you go up the social scale. The proles act mainly on instinct and feeling whilst those higher up are more calculating in their affairs. I imagine that this factor explains educated class marital stability.
Today, women are not as reliant on betaness, and, being free to choose, want an attractive and competent mate -- and there are simply not very many of these men.
Agree. But I feel that there has been a qualitative shift in masculinity in the post WW2 period. At least in my experience, my dad's generation seemed to possess far more of those alpha qualities en mass than compared to today. It's true that you can't make everyone alpha but the mean can be shifted quite significantly. Roissy's then and now series illustrates this quite well. The third picture down is worth the study. They look like common men but they look harder and more resolute than today's shlubs.
What I'm saying is that the manosphere seems to ignore this dimension of modern social change. There does appear to be a qualitative drop in the standards of masculinity. Saying that you should restrict woman's choice so that every beta gets a prize does nothing to ensure the quality of that relationship. Desire is contingent upon the satisfaction of hypergamy. There is no way around it. Sexy matters.
at least not when compared with the next tier down where you see, say, nurses paired with dominant/sexy firemen or tradesmen
I'm not sure about this. Perhaps the reason why firemen are so sexy is because they are muscular and do stuff. Perhaps the reason cubicle drones aren't is because they have lost the ability to do so. Not that they do not possess that ability.
What irks me about the manosophere is it insistence on sexiness in women but its near denial of the need for sexiness in men.
@Thursday.
I wouldn't be too harsh on this girl. Chastity or celibacy has social stigma attached to it, especially here in Australia. She's miss average. No better, no worse.
Oops.
Link to Roissy's post Then and Now.
What irks me about the manosophere is it insistence on sexiness in women but its near denial of the need for sexiness in men.
Except that it's no different than it used to be. Men didn't used to worry about being sexy because they didn't have to. The culture did all the heavy lifting for them. Less men doing physical work combined with the rise of feminism has eroded that function of culture so that it has to be taken on individually now.
There does appear to be a qualitative drop in the standards of masculinity.
Where do you see this? There are plenty of guys who take their childish obsessions to extremes, but those are still extremes. If you look at average middle class young men they are mostly well meaning responsible people. Their shortcoming is that they are naive about women, which they also were in the past but women were restricted in acting out on their desires by the culture, which is not the case any more. Look at pictures of world war 2 recruits, they don't look any "harder" or more "manly" than today. Men haven't changed that much except in their attitudes towards women's roles. They give women a wider berth, because that's what's expected of them, and ironically they get punished for it.
Agenda Insight: Goodbye to Good Men
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeL-Fn0V8iU
"I feel that there has been a qualitative shift in masculinity in the post WW2 period. At least in my experience, my dad's generation seemed to possess far more of those alpha qualities en mass than compared to today. It's true that you can't make everyone alpha but the mean can be shifted quite significantly."
Yes, this is true, SP, but the problem is that you seem to be blaming men for this qualitative change and, in doing so, you are overlooking one of the cardinal tenets of the manosphere [which I think is irrefutably true, BTW]: men will try to be whatever women want them to be. Fewer men today are good manly men in large part because manly men are not rewarded with pussy. It's really as simple as that. If women aren't going to respect you for being a good man, then why bother?
Back in 1934, Cole Porter wrote "Anything Goes", which, among several great lines, included this zinger: "...most guys today that women prize today are just silly gigolos".
Since then, with the breakdown of traditional mores and values, more and more women have come to prize "silly gigolos" over good men and today we are living with the results.
In order to get some good men to come along, all women have to do is keep their legs closed to the silly gigolos and explain to men that they will open their legs only for truly good and manly men. Unfortunately, I don't think women are collectively smart enough to do that.
My grandfather was super manly. Fought the Nazi's, lived through the depression, fought strike breakers.
He also beat the crap out of my grandmother. Dominance has its price.
Mediocre women, like the one you've posted, end up with mediocre men. That means she has to choose between sexy and dependable. Can't have both. If they choose sexy they have to live with it.
The difference between "the post-WW2 generation" and today might have had something to do with that whole "post WW2" thing.
There was a whole litany of usually uncredited and unremarked but incredibly important things about team dynamics, showing up and working to share a common mission, working for the benefit of your group, shared experiences, holding up under stress, and other things that tend to get pushed down the memory hole, or taught only to daughters instead of sons.
The women are more organized because they're allowed to say what they want among their self and common-interested friends and get real criticism, whereas the closest male equivalent is trading complaints with dissolute and mainly self-interested people online.
The "got mine, fuck you" fathers who forgot their military training and make no attempts to return its structures or its lessons to the common society are as perniciously destructive of civilization as their socially competent but sexually oblivious daughters. Most of the time they seem to share the same organizations.
Just like King Solomon, those hypercompetent sought their "wisdom" in the forms of many women while Israel slowly perished under the weight of heavy taxation and foreign infiltration and immigration from the far corners of the earth.
The truth is that Jesus was God's Wisdom all along, and the tendency of men like Solomon to put such an important concept under a feminine persona was their primary undoing as people and as representatives of their country.
(What need have I of vulgar labels like 'citizen' or 'male' or 'Israelite' when obviously my wisdom surpasses all my fellow men? I have universally applicable knowledge, my influence reaches across the world, I see all hidden things, and all men are as incompetent, cringing ants to me!)
She's miss average. No better, no worse.
Which these days is pretty damn bad.
That means she has to choose between sexy and dependable. Can't have both. If they choose sexy they have to live with it.
Why can't she have both? Why can't a man strive to be both sexy and dependable? The two qualities are not mutually exclusive.
Every man in the manosphere wants a hot and virtuous wife. Why is it wrong that a woman wants the same?
Imagine counseling a Christian young man with the advice of, don't worry about how she looks as long she is dependable and virtuous she'll make a good wife. Cigstache is waiting for you.
The equivalent these days would be wanting a wife with fake DD cups and a total porn star in bed but who's also faithful and a good homekeeper. Most guys are not holding out for that until they don't have a choice any more.
"Why can't she have both?"
Because she doesn't have both. If she is hot and virtuous she can have both. If she is just hot she can have one. If she is just virtuous she can have one.
Or, like a lot of girls, she may have neither. In which case she gets neither.
Women can fuck above their weight, but they can't get commitment above their weight. If the woman is nothing special she can't be making demands.
"Why can't a man strive to be both sexy and dependable?"
Because they are often mutually exclusive. Dark triad is sexy. Violence and dominance is sexy. But it's the total opposite of dependable.
Like I said about my grandmother, she got a guy manly enough to fight for her but sometimes that meant those fists turned on her. You've got to choose. Your choice of mates are as imperfect as you are.
Only a tiny portion of men at the top of the hierarchy of genes and birth are going to have both. Women today want Christian Grey. The actual male population has maybe a dozen of these people in the whole world.
"Imagine counseling a Christian young man with the advice of, don't worry about how she looks as long she is dependable and virtuous she'll make a good wife."
Actually I thought the Christian counseling advise was to marry 30 something carousel riders looking to cash in before it's too late.
What this critique against men misses is that feminism has had a demoralizing effect on men and on masculinity. This woman complains about wearing the pants in the relationship but that is what feminism has been all about. Men don't feel confident being "man in the relationship" because they have been told repeatedly that women want egalitarian relationships and don't want men to dominate them, sexually or otherwise. You can't expect strong, confident, dominant men to appear when you have had an entire generation of feminist culture which has preached the exact opposite and cultivated pussified men.
Secondly, strong, confident men aren't born. Perhaps some are.. but those are very few of those around. Most men need the attention and sexual access to a desirable woman to inspire them to become better. There is nothing in this world.. absolutely nothing.. more powerful. .inspiring to a man ... than the attention and sexual access to a desirable, attractive woman. When most women deny most men sexual access during their sexually peak years and instead spread their legs for the bad boys, men just aren't going to develop into the strong, confident men these women seem to want when they're ready to stop slutting it up with the bad boys. Good men aren't going to just appear when these women are ready. They have to be cultivated and inspired to become good men.
As Jordan Peterson said in that Your Agenda insight segment posted by a commentator above, you might want to consider that it requires a certain type of cultural discipline, the granting of male privilege and control of women's worst impluses (i.e., sluttery and hypergamy) to force men to achieve and to give men incentive to achieve. Why should most men bother if they are going to be denied sexual access to desirable women, denied a shot at a healthy, stable marriage, and denied access and control over their own offspring and progeny? Roissy/Heartiste gets to the real root of the problem better than your one-sided attack on men:
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/charles-murrays-one-sided-shaming/
There is nothing in this world.. absolutely nothing.. more powerful. .inspiring to a man ... than the attention and sexual access to a desirable, attractive woman.
I am going to catch hell like SP does, but there is something that motivates a man more than access to Leni Reifenstahl-level pussy. Anybody who performs just for the pussy snacks is little better than a trained seal.
Far more powerful is the example, and the mentoring, of an older, more accomplished man, and becoming the man you were meant to be; strong, stable, self-controlled, and self-directed, and equal to whatever this shithole of a world can throw at you.
This is the cord that was cut sometime on the watch of the Greatest Generation.
Fuck the androsphere. One third of the participants thereof appear to be like the nerd who never got over the fact that the head cheerleader in his high school wasn't impressed by his mint condition copy of Issue 1 of Sandman
Another third seems oddly faggy to me, with all their obsession about 'manly' posing, travel tips, physical prowess, fashion sense - handing out bons mots and casual negs, as if they aspired to be Oscar Wilde or something.
The Christian third are the most puzzling to me of all. There is some real anger there, but it helps to remember that feminism didn't come from nowhere. It is as much a Christian heresy as Marxism, and you aren't going to put the toothpaste back into the tube.
You want one of these accomplished doxies pouring out of the schools these days? Man up, or stay home, but for God's sake don't bitch about it like a whinny babby. You still have the freedom to take your trade elsewhere.
It would be nice to see young men display the same easy, unself-conscious masculinity as did the young man in this photo:
http://www.ourgardenofcarmel.org/images/YoungKarolWojtyla.jpg
You are criticizing this "loser", but to me he seems like a winner, who has perfectly adapted to our feminist society.
Will he get trapped in a marriage that is too expensive to get out from? No.
Will he be abused and disrespected by his wife? No.
Will he work like a dog, just to get away from the house? No.
Will he get ass-raped in a divorce? No.
Will he see his lifelong savings stolen? No.
Will he lose access to his children? Probably not (he could claim primary caregiver).
In the current environment, maybe one of you shaming artists, can explain to me why it would be a good idea for a man to "man-up" ???
I know plenty of good men, reliable providers, who wasted their lives supporting ungrateful, frigid and abusive wives who knew that they could get away with anything, because of the implicit threat of divorce. Of course, divorce happened anyway, and these men are now evicted from their homes, ruined, separated from their children, and depressed. Many have considered suicide, many have serious health problems, many have serious financial problems due to the insane payments that they have to make each month, most will never be able to retire, some will pay child support penalties and interest to the state for the rest of their lives.
Who's the "loser" now ?
The one thing I always want to ask, and it's why I've never gotten too deep into the manosphere.
It's obvious these guys are -losers-. So why do so many women insist on getting in deep with them? How?
When Dalrock and FullOfGraceSeasonedWithSalt were dissecting Marc Driscoll's garbage-columns, I always wanted to grab the single moms Driscoll was parading and go "Why, the, hell, did, you, sleep, with, a, loser?! Did you not pick up the cues he's a loser? Did you see him being a derelict??!"
The reason why they get with losers is because losers are often sexy. What women find sexy is different from what men find sexy. A reliable, responsible cubicle jockey is not sexy, whereas a womanizing rogue is sexy. It's how it is. In times past, women had to sacrifice the sexy for the dependable, and they don't have to do that any longer. The higher echelons generally do, but the lower echelons (including most of the middle) are more visceral, and that's why we see marriage eroding.
My only disagreement with SP here is that I'm not convinced men are less masculine than they were in the WWII era as a whole -- there were plenty of shlubs then, too. There were also plenty of marriages where the woman wore the pants (unhappily) because she ran over the husband basically. In my own parents' generation (WWII generation), this was not uncommon at all. The difference is that women had to put up with it, because being a sexed singleton female until 40 was substantially socially shamed, and fewer women had access to, or were comfortable pursuing, their own financial independence. So they kind of had to lump it with whom they ended up with -- and most women didn't end up with a sexy guy (and probably weren't that sexy themselves). What's changed now is that women don't have to do that, so apart from the calculating ones at the upper educated foodchain, they tend to gun it and shoot for the stars, because there is no perceived downside, because they can get male attention reliably that way through sex (and from sexier guys than they could ever get to marry them, or whom they might even not want to marry), and because the perceived downsides of doing so are minimal at least until she is in her mid 30s. It's the market dynamics that shifted more than men suddenly becoming less sexy -- the supply of sexy men has been more or less constant, just as the supply of sexy women has.
Which leads to my next point. It's true that men are silly for wanting hot if they are not. That goes for both men and women. Sad fact is that most men and women are not hot. Hot is a small portion of the population, especially past 30. Most people are bog standard average with various deficiencies that detract from their ability to be credibly hot -- that is men and women alike. More realism in approach in this area would be a good idea for men and women alike. It's true that sometimes the manosphere talks like it wants hot without being hot itself, but the other side of the coin is women who are not hot sleeping up and thereby thinking that they are hotter than they actually are. Both sexes are generally not hot, and are bog standard average. The key for men and women alike is learning to be attracted to someone of their own level of attractiveness, which means, if they are not hot themselves, to someone else who is also not hot. Of course, you can try to become hot (much of the manosphere efforts in Game are directed this way) so as to avoid having to do that, but in my opinion the benefits for most here are more in the nature of marginal improvements rather than fundamental ones, exceptional cases aside. Most people are going to have to learn to be attracted to someone of their own non-hot bog standard average level, or go it alone.
Increasingly, men and women are opting to go it alone rather than go for someone who is as equally un-hot as they are themselves, especially below the upper tier.
I had to take myself off the market because I didn't have job, a degree or any future. I am going to finish my degree in Statistics pretty soon. So all that will soon change. But what will the SMP look like ?
I shudder.
I am 37 years old.
Sometimes I wish for death.
The problem is that a systemic solution can't be based on a characteristic that is rare: hotness or sexiness. Very few people are hot or sexy. Saying people need to be hot and sexy to generate sustained desire to make marriages work is fine for the few, but isn't a realistic recipe for the masses. Any systemic solution has to work for the bog-standard average Joe and Jane, who are neither hot nor sexy. Not everyone is a superhero, and not everyone can become one.
That's why I think a better focus is on recalibration of expectations, and an emphasis on traditional values, rather than a renewed focus on trying to become and remain sexy and hot for one's spouse. Very few people can sustain that through a marriage. It can't be the glue in marriage for the masses.
@MCB
Anybody who performs just for the pussy snacks is little better than a trained seal.
Bingo.
This mechanism went a long way towards enabling feminism and debasing men. The worship of poon defacto pedastalises women. Saying no to the pussy (i.e Chastity) undercuts this dynamic. It's not that men have to be asexual, it's just that as a man, you only accept pussy when it is on your own terms. As a Christian male, it means on God's terms.
with all their obsession about 'manly' posing, travel tips, physical prowess, fashion sense - handing out bons mots and casual negs, as if they aspired to be Oscar Wilde or something.
Polish is not a bad thing but it is not the thing. Fashion, travel, fitness need to be kept in perspective. Acting like it doesn't matter makes you look like a brute, worshiping them makes you look like a pansy.
@Marellus
Gain some balls, read up about game, and go to Europe.(Avoid Anglosphere women) Especially middle/eastern/southern europe. Lot's of Good women there.
But you have to have balls. Especially withe the EE women.
@Anon
So why do so many women insist on getting in deep with them? How?
Who gets all the male attention, the virtuous fat chick or the the hot single mum?
We live in a world where we are encouraged to go with our "feelings" and not what is prudent. Romanticism has a lot to answer for.
Being prudent akin to being "boring".
Most women are superficial judges of character. As long a he makes her feel good he worth committing to, when the feeling goes so does the "love".
I do think that men are less masculine today, but the shift has occurred in the mean of the population. There are more manginas now than there were before. But this is a subject for a future post.
There were also plenty of marriages where the woman wore the pants (unhappily) because she ran over the husband basically. In my own parents' generation (WWII generation), this was not uncommon at all. The difference is that women had to put up with it, because being a sexed singleton female until 40 was substantially socially shamed,
True. But it would be a mistake to say such a marriage was healthy, or good enough. The divorce epidemic that ensured with the removal of social strictures would tend to imply that many of these marriages were seriously dysfunctional. If we want to fix up marriage as a institution we need to look not only at social dynamics but interpersonal ones as well. As a Christian, my aim is to strengthen marriage, but the Trad/MRA approach of "let's re-introduce the social strictures without too much emphasis on interpersonal dynamics" simply takes us back to the early part of the 20thC. It just creates another pressure cooker situation where people try to agitate for the legitimacy of divorce again.
the supply of sexy men has been more or less constant, just as the supply of sexy women has.
But the whole point of Game is that men can acquire sexiness, to a point. However, pretending that sexy doesn't matter (paging trads and MRA's) ignores the glue that is fundamental to marriage. A woman who desires her husband is not going to want to leave him. Now, I'm not saying that social strictures don't matter, but it needs to be a two-pronged approach. Society needs to strengthen marriage as a social institution, but it also needs to recognise the sexual dynamics within marriage. Trad society concentrated on the former far more than the latter. Christian ascetisism, in my opinion, is responsible for a lot of the traditionalist neglect on the subject.
@Brendan
That's why I think a better focus is on recalibration of expectations, and an emphasis on traditional values, rather than a renewed focus on trying to become and remain sexy and hot for one's spouse. Very few people can sustain that through a marriage.
It may be that sexiness is difficult to sustain in marriage, but it is possible to cultivate long term habits that do not sabotage it. For example, taking responsibility as man, making decisions (you've got no idea how many women tell me that they are sick of making the decision in the relationship) keeping your BMI within normal limits, avoiding really gross behaviours etc. Game is as much about avoiding negative behaviours as it is promoting positive ones.
I don't disagree with that, in terms of increasing the quality of one's own marriage, but I don't see that as being the systemic reason marriage is failing. The marriages I see who are long-term successful tend to be bog-standard average folks who are attentive to each other, but aren't very sexy, men aren't super alpha or dominant, etc. -- they stay married because it's their best option in life and what they want for themselves and their kids. It's more about the values than it is about the BMI and the decisionmaking alphaness. Now these are mostly the people in the higher educational strand that I personally know (work colleagues and so on). The ones who are more alpha (for men) or sexy (for women) tend to not be on their first marriages, at least when you are talking about people in the 35-50 range with kids older than, say, 5. The ones who have been in stable marriages are not at either end of the sexiness scale (not hideous, not gorgeous, either physically or persona wise for the men) and they last. It has to do with the values and the expectations and the attentiveness much more than asserting alphaness or sexiness in the marriage, from what I have observed, in terms of marriages that last.
It doesn't matter anyway, young girls are not looking for husbands. They're looking to fun fuck for about ten years between 18 and 28 and get married after. The marginal amount of sexiness that game might give the average shlub is not going to get him a good wife. It might allow him to get a few girlfriends here and there so that he avoids a totally arid early twenties while he waits for his slutty counterparts to get off the carousel. Then when he's waited long enough he can count his blessings that one of those skanks has gotten tired of being plowed by alphas and blacks and is going to give him the gift of marriage.
That's why game doesn't matter long term to a man looking for a good wife and a family. There are too few good women left for most of those guys, because the culture has spoiled them. The culture has to change first.
You mistake is the common one I have seen in the medical profession. The woman is an idiot, and she is not more capable of carrying a load than her boyfriend.
She is actively choosing a fool - that makes her foolish. She refuses to leave him even with so many red flags - that makes her foolish and a coward.
She is not bearing up under the burden, either, because she is coming to see you.
Nor is she ambitious/high achieving. It sounds like she can just hold a job, pay some pills, and choose her relationships foolishly.
The manospehere would support your view of what a man should be in a relationship, but would not think she was at fault for the man's foolishness.
@Brendan
but I don't see that as being the systemic reason marriage is failing.
It's one of the reasons. Marriage is being attacked along many fronts but "masculinity failure" is one that I'm increasingly noticing.
It has to do with the values and the expectations and the attentiveness much more than asserting alphaness or sexiness in the marriage, from what I have observed, in terms of marriages that last.
I agree with provisos. You should read a book called The Sex Diaries by Bettina Arndt. It really should be called The No Sex Diaries, as many of the couples in the book reported good "friendships" but zero sex lives. It was a source of continual frustration, especially for the men. Though to outward appearances these couples appeared stable and happy.
Brendan,
I found my way here via a comment Hollenhund left with some links.
Just my opinion, but I think you've got a really incredible insight there with linking alpha sexiness versus beta comfort/dependability traits to SES. One thing you have a knack for is bringing some innovative thoughts and analysis to some of the old tired debates.
I've gone round and round and round and round with Susan Walsh at HUS about female preferences vis a vis attraction especially sexual attraction.
Now here is where it gets interesting to me. Long story, but I had a bit of a segue from more upper class, highly educated life/people and spent a year as a bouncer. Much of experience and beliefs come from the year I spent doing that. Obviously, we are talking mostly low SES here so I was basically observing what low SES females respond to. In contrast, Susan Walsh is high SES along with all her "focus group girls". I think it is SES differences that mostly reconcile the dramatic difference in views as to what women respond to...."alpha sexy traits" or beta traits.
Interestingly, you hit on something that I think may be quite true. These upper class beta male-beta female marriages may have alot more to do with practical utility than really organic genuine sexual attraction...which would explain the high rate of affairs you point to. I believe this is essentially the French model of marriage. You marry for practical reasons and then cheat on the side with someone you are genuinely sexually attracted to.
It was a source of continual frustration, especially for the men. Though to outward appearances these couples appeared stable and happy.
Interesting. I'll often read comments various people will make about all the happy and stable marriages they observe, but the truth is you really don't know diddly squat about someone's marriage behind closed doors from observing them in the park for 15 minutes.
"Women want the full package: charm/sexiness and masculine achievement/responsibility. A mix of alpha and beta qualities. That's plainly obvious.
The problem is that men like this are not common and the truth is that they never have been common. The ancien regime emphasized the beta qualities over the alpha ones by means of the social expectations/restrictions on female achievement, making women more reliant on beta qualities in mate selection. Many of them ended up married to men who were not attractive to them due to not having sufficient alpha qualities, and in some cases to men who had good beta qualities on paper but nevertheless fared poorly (turned into louts, etc.). Today, women are not as reliant on betaness, and, being free to choose, want an attractive and competent mate -- and there are simply not very many of these men.
I don't think this is new, however, as I state above. For generations, perhaps thousands of years now, men have not had to present like this (both sexy and successful) simply to mate effectively. It's true that the relatively few men who had this mix of qualities were the ones who had the best mating opportunities (unsurprisingly), but it's not been the case that having both of these was required to mate effectively. Today, it is the case, and most men just are not going to make that cut."
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Welcome to the club. Women have been expected to be the "full package" for their men for millenia.
Expert homemakers, cooks and bakers, child care givers, nurses, home educators AND stay in shape through multiple pregnancies, look as pretty as possible, and bring the goods in the bedroom.
So what if men are also now feeling the heat to not only fulfill their roles as providers, but stay in shape and bring it in the bedroom as well?
And look, its not THAT hard. All you have to do is have a decent job, a regular work out routine, stay abreast of mens' fashion and keep an open mind sexually and mix it up in the sack.
We don't expect you to be body building billionaires. Just be able to support yourself before marriage and contribute financially to a family after, and stay as healthy, fit and attractive as is feasibly possible.
Its not rocket science.
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Blogmaster: Sorry if this posts multiple times. I'm not seeing anything my side so reposted.
"We don't expect you to be body building billionaires. Just be able to support yourself before marriage and contribute financially to a family after, and stay as healthy, fit and attractive as is feasibly possible."
Exactly, and if you're lucky a woman about to hit the wall will let you have her, after all the local alphas have. You don't need to be a bodybuilding billionaire, you just need to swallow your pride and accept it.
@ReallyLongName: "All you have to do is have a decent job, a regular work out routine, stay abreast of mens' fashion and keep an open mind sexually and mix it up in the sack."
Traditionally, especially in America, men's jobs have been of the demanding, totalitarian and punishing variety that preclude workout routines, fashion upkeep, and being able to quote chapter and verse from the Kama Sutra. It's the type of schedule that can be more easily kept with a government or office salary job, which have mostly been taken by women.
Most 'man jobs' involve the type of schedule that revolves around getting a problem solved, which means odd hours, sections of fanatical labor interspersed with what would look to an observer like inactivity (thinking and visualizing a problem in non-trivial,) and no preset routines.
But you're more likely to get paid what you're worth (or what you negotiate) and get real satisfaction out of solving real problems. The moment a job is organized to become comfortable, nonphysical, and routine is the moment some cost-cutter looking to make a name for itself in HR figures it can be done by a woman or privileged minority for mucho diversity dinero.
The alternative is to be your own boss, but that means you just have to deal with the reams of government regulation without the set-asides and experience that larger and more-resourced firms have, so you're working way more hours just to be in compliance.
Basically, those demands are as silly and ass-backwards as a man saying ALL I WANT IS A SEXY GIRL WHO CAN UNDERSTAND COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS AS WELL AS I CAN! They're ridiculously specific to your personal experience and only achievable for those willing to spend many years together teaching each other in their free moments.
Of course, the standard 4th-year, 2nd-kid divorce tends to short-circuit that and lead both parties into a bitter reset and scramble for basic necessities, leading to the loss of any faith in such quieter and more personal ties in their own lifetime. Guarantees a maturity reset, too.
"
Traditionally, especially in America, men's jobs have been of the demanding, totalitarian and punishing variety that preclude workout routines, fashion upkeep, and being able to quote chapter and verse from the Kama Sutra. It's the type of schedule that can be more easily kept with a government or office salary job, which have mostly been taken by women.
Most 'man jobs' involve the type of schedule that revolves around getting a problem solved, which means odd hours, sections of fanatical labor interspersed with what would look to an observer like inactivity (thinking and visualizing a problem in non-trivial,) and no preset routines."
Oh yeah? "most" American men are working those types of jobs? In which states? And can you name those specific professions that are like that, that "most" American men are working.
And if its true that those jobs require "sections of fanatical labor" then they should already be in pretty good physical shape.
"able to quote chapter and verse from the Kama Sutra."
Again, exaggerating. Most American women themselves are unfamiliar with the Kama Sutra, what to speak of being able to qoute chapter and verse and identify themselves as a Padmini, Chitrini, Shankini or Hastini.
The formula is simple; eat right (not hard), stay in reasonably good shape (again not hard) and keep an open mind sexually (also not hard).
I would think any man would value these things and would also value a woman who values them.
Hi Brendan! Long time no see.
I think your analysis and solution is very good. I would add that another issue is that marriage was designed in a democratic way with the same vows and expectations for all social classes, probably with the idea that everyone could eventually reach the same level.
People that marry for sexiness and /or sexual attraction are bound to fail sooner than later because nature didn't designed sexyness to be long lived but to be cyclical probably to mix it up the genes as much as possible. Beta traits more often than not are core traits that remain through a lifetime, so pairing up permanently over that probably has a lot more chances to survive in the long run. People that only want mates for the time they are attractive to them shouldn't sign for long time marriage, unless they are willing to wait till the next cycle and try and fall in love again with the same person. Athol's had a good post about how he plays around this physical attraction by trying to crush on his wife on a regular basis.
I also think that this is why in ancient past wives had a duty to engage in sex with their husbands as a way to keep both of them doing things that could trigger attraction instead of neglecting the attraction part and letting the relationship getting cold, just a though.
The analysis again focuses on the individual level. Frankly, people are just not that in control of their own choices and identity most of the time. They more or less follow the social script. The problem begins there.
For her entire life this woman has been told to be responsible, take charge, get a good job, save her money, that she is entitled to the best, etc. She has complied with those teachings. The guy has heard...listen to women, respect them, don't be aggressive, be nice, etc. He has complied too.
Given that, is it any wonder why each is acting like that? Sure, her underlying biology may not find the man sexy - but her social instruction still makes her act masculine, dominant, and in charge. The guy has been brainwashed to defer to women as well. So, it isn't a shock when he is submissive, compliant, and helpless - looking to be told what to do. He is indeed a victim. They both are. Puppets of the social forces that educate and define them.
Of course, she might enjoy a more "traditional" relationship. I think many women would. BUT,that is not what society TRAINS men and women for right now. Social roles are set up for women to be masculine and dominant...and men to be feminine and submissive. So, that's what people do - whether it makes them happy or not.
Given that, if women want men to be men, then a few things need to change. First, women need to stop promoting anything shaming men into a submissive role and giving women unequal power over them. Second, they need to give men their blessing, support, and love to be men.
Men need to shrug off this imposed propaganda. Men need to help other men see the truth - manosphere, MRA, red pill, etc. They need to be reacquainted with dominance, leadership, and power. If they don't have good fathers...they need mentors and role models.
What is useless though is sitting around scratching our heads and wondering "what's wrong with men". As if they are creating the situation! They are not. Men are not "ending"...they are being systematically neutered and suffocated.
If men don't like that situation, and women don't find those men appealing, then rather than complaining, they should work to change the situation producing the problem. Then, men could learn to be men, women could go back to being women, and each could be a little more attractive to the other.
As for the men...just because I don't blame you for the PROBLEM, doesn't mean you are not held RESPONSIBLE for the solution. Stop complaining. No one is coming to save you. Save yourself. Learn to be powerful, valuable, an a leader. Learn to elicit respect from others and treat them fairly in return. Then, you won't have to mew for attention, go MGTOW, game for validating ONS... You can get real women, satisfying relationships on your terms, and actually be happy.
*ding*
That's it. That's what's been bothering me about these last couple of posts. There both about:
"What do women want? How must men change to give it to them?"
But wait. This begs the question:
WHY? What's in it for men?
Seriously. Given the way the law is framed, nothing a man earns or creates is his own, once he marries. And any children are NEVER his. They belong to her and her real husband, the State. Her promise is meangingless, she is equally as free in her sexual choices as she was before marriage, and she can unilaterally dissolve the whole thing AND get cash and prizes. His obligations may continue for decades, if not his entire life, reagardless (depending on where exactly he lives).
What does a man get from marriage? Where is the upside? I'm not seeing one!
"They're"
"regardless"
Damnit.
(Apologies if this posts twice)
Your patient mentioned that she wanted an assertive man, like her Dad, who would tell her to "shut up" when she started shouting (and talk to her later when she was calmer)... A man who would "carry her to bed".
Over here in the UK they recently changed the law, so that something called "controlling behaviour" is now classed as *drumroll* .... domestic violence. No, really. Not a joke.
"Controlling behaviour" includes:
- controlling partner's spending
"No, we can't afford a new fitted kitchen, the one we have is fine"
- controlling partner's phone use:
"You've been on that phone for 3hours! Do you know how much calls to Australia cost? You can talk to your Mum when she comes back from holiday next week!"
- controlling partner's driving:
"Slow down! You're doing 50mph in a residential zone! You're gonna kill someone!"
- controlling partner's access to family and friends:
"No, your mother cannot come and live with us for three months this summer!"
Telling a woman to "shut up" would be controlling her self-expression / humiliating her / harming her self-esteem etc.etc.etc.
If you raise your voice when you say it? OMG you made her AFRAID! That's DV!
Under DV law over here, any woman deciding she's sick of her man can call 999 say "he's controlling me! / I'm afraid of him" and get him thrown out of the house by the coppers and forbidden from returning.
The upshot of this is: smart, assertive, manly men with any kind of asset value will increasingly not risk cohabiting and being made homeless whenever gf decides she's unhaaaapy. Actually, even fairly together blokes who have low to no asset value, but have applied their skills well enough to get a rented place that suits them (like me) will be hugely reluctant to move in with someone who has *that* Sword of Damocles hanging over them. Who the hell wants to go through the hassle and expense of finding a new gaff, just because your Mrs. has a tantrum?
The only men who will cheerfully cohabit will be "losers" who basically have nothing to lose anyway! Those "losers" will cheerfully cohabit and maybe even marry, because they start from pretty much zero to begin with!
I hear the laws in the US are going pretty much the same way. So, it looks like your patient has a choice: An assertive live-out lover, or a "loser" cohabitee.
This is not (necessarily) the disappearnce of manly men, this is the effect of a police state interfering in people's private lives: driving those manly men - who wish to at least be free in their own home - away from cohabiting. It's a 3rd party problem, IMO.
I put "loser" in quotes for a lot of reasons , not least because in this example it seems like this one guy is getting fed, watered and housed for free. If that's the aim of his game, he's "winning".
More generally "loser" is shaming label, often used by people who want you to do stuff to please them i.e. "users".
A man who pleases himself, but chooses not to please* a woman will be widely regarded as a "loser".
(*e.g. by cohabiting with / marrying her, paying for a house, a car, 2 holidays a year and a couple of kids, and then meekly handing it all over plus decades of chilimony when she divorces him)
However, he may WIN peace of mind and greater freedom to live life on his own terms.
Who are you (or anyone) to call that man a "loser"?
You call this "hedonism" and say it makes men "soft". That's BS. A man who can eschew the blandishments of society / wife in pursuit of freedom will, necessarily, need real backbone to get through the inevitable hard times when he has no-one but himself to rely on.
- controlling partner's access to family and friends:
"No, your mother cannot come and live with us for three months this summer!"
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I'm South Asian and in my culture women would LOVE to be have the right to say this.
In our culture the son never leaves his parents home but brings his wife to live with them after the wedding. We South Asian WOMEN have to live with our in-laws til death do us part.
It's not easy.
You Americans are lucky you don't have to do this.
Can't believe an American would say "no" just to 3 little months.
The Social Pathologist said...
you've got no idea how many women tell me that they are sick of making the decision in the relationship
They are telling the truth, but as is often the case with the ladies, it is only a partial truth.
What they are omitting is this : they want the man to make the exact same decisions which they would have made themselves in the first place. If his decision is not what they secretly wanted anyway, they will ruthlessly override it. This is the reason why a lot of men in LTRs are refusing to make decisions conerning their couple : in reality, they have no true authority, it is only a masquerade of decison-making. Next time a woman tells you she's sick of making the decisions in the relationship, try asking her if the man in question has ever made a decision she didn't agree with, and how she reacted...
The problem is that women are caught between two conflicting pulsions: their primitive instinctive need to be dominated, and their modern cultural/social need to dominate. I don't think you will be out of a job any time soon.
Reread the post, and I suppose the question I would be asking myself if I were you is : " What the hell does she want from me ? "
I mean, if you got shacked up with a useless, pathetic, slovenly layabout you didn't even want to bang, would you go to the doctor about it ? Nope, you would put up with it or you would dump her.
But of course, that is the problem with women : they have far too many scruples when it comes to dumping men . They feel soooo guilty about even envisaging it, and that makes them anxious, which prevents them from sleeping, and then they have to visit the doctor !
Well, all irony aside, here is my take on what she wants from you. She has already decided to dump loserboy. However, the story she has told you did not explain exactly why she is with him. On the contrary, she has exaggerated his failings (he calls from work because he's thirsty ??? come on ! ) Obviously, he must have something to offer, or she wouldn't be with him, right ? My guess is that he is in fact highly loyal to her. That's why she feels guilty. She is about to do the dirty on a loyal guy who has done her no significant wrong.
This is where the doctor comes in. Unfortunately, there is no alpha stud on the horizon just waiting to replace loserboy. If there had been, you would never have seen her.
You are a figure of authority. If you say, or even vaguely imply that she should dump him for her own health's sake, then she can do it without the slightest qualm. That's what she's looking for : confirmation and support of the decision she has in fact already made. Every time you say something she wanted to hear, she "looks at you with puppy dog eyes". Hell, she would have been willing to dump him for you on the spot !
Sick of making decisions? I love making decisions. The problem only arises when you have a choice of 2 or more really awesome things or events to decide on like; a trip to Bali or a trip to Malta this winter?
Flip a coin.
Women tend to have a natural ability to influence the particulars of subcommunication and word choice to make themselves seem more powerful, competent, needy, etc. than they really are. They use this to influence the perception of the unwary for their own ends. Whether it's to garner sympathy, extract resources, or just abuse men, she has an agenda.
SP seems like a dupe that would fall for it.
Van rooinek -- Because all of those "good men" have zero sex appeal.
I had height, I had looks, I put in the gym time, I was constantly told how handsome and even how "sexy" I was, and I had to turn down offers for one night stands (a few of which were actually from women, hallelujah!). I even encountered several NONChristian women who recognized me as a good catch and were interested in relationships, but, I had to turn them down too -- "do not be unequally yoked", etc.
The one and only relationship I wanted -- heterosexual, marriage-track, chaste, Christian -- totally eluded me...
...until my income skyrocketed.
Okay SP, this is why I can't buy the entire women-have-it-all-together-and-men-today-are-losers meme: She has a job, money, and all that. Good
But can't recognize how much of a leech her boyfriend is? She can't kick him to the curb even though he's obviously an emotional cancer causing her nothing but grief?
Don't give me that women-find-different-things-sexy crap. She's admitted she lost sexual attraction to him.
She can't see -what's right in front of her-?
Dr. Marvin has the prescription, and it's what you should have told her: One boot to curb. Problem goes away overnight.
I think by this point everyone has a keen understanding of the central tenets of attraction, but in reading these comments, it seems like so many people are approaching it in an absurdly cerebral and general fashion -- making blanket statements about attraction dynamics within socioeconomic parameters, blah blah.
I find myself a bit confused because the most basic of attraction of instincts are undoubtedly as stated, but many of you all seem to extrapolate them too far.
I'll use my own anecdotal evidence, since that seems to be on par with most of the discussion here:
A year ago I was working as a mover, which is arguably one of the most grueling jobs in the U.S. I went on many dates over the course of two years and had more options than a humble man deserves, and expressed no overt interest in improving my professional hand. I am more attractive than charming, and the fact that these women could not give a shit about my profession makes many of your comments ring hollow.
That said, I think maybe my absurd confidence and contentment conquered the hypergamy, but only temporarily, and the sense that I'm educated came through. But either way, I feel like there is a prevailing sentiment that people in the middle-lower class and just men who lack means in general cannot attract and keep a good woman without regressing into some appalachian alcoholic horror-fest is a poisonous myth.
A commenter on my blog has recently pointed me towards this post of yours, and I agree with it general. However, there is one tidbit:
I don't blame this woman for wanting her man to be reasonably amiable and successful. Her demands are not too high, and she takes care of herself (both as a person and in the sexual appeal sense). If some manosphere writers blame her for that, they are foolish as you have pointed out.
However, I still blame her for different reasons. Mainly, she is spending months and possibly years agonizing over whether to leave an obvious loser (a person who doesn't treat her well and who doesn't bring anything to life). She should have never even gotten involved with such a person, yet some of her best years are passing while she clings to him despite obvious flaws. Meanwhile, many Betas who aren't "deadbeat" are languishing without a partner and have probably been rejected by her because she has a a boyfriend, is trying to see where it's going, and other inane reasons.
That's my complaint: good women choosing losers while claiming that they don't want them. And I think it's disturbingly common in today's society.
Also...does a physician really say "Look, I'm a bit of a sexist pig," and "Unfortunately for you..."
Must be a lot more frank in Australia. And what kind of Austrian economics enthusiast is Catholic? Jesus, man. No pun.
The Social Pathologist's link to Roissy's post Then and Now posted at 8:54 AM is broken.
In the future, computer-using men will be the sexiest males.
--Scott Adams, humorist
"P: I'm having problems with my boyfriend. M: What sort of problems? P: We argue all the time, over everything. M: What do you argue about? P: Money mainly. He can't seem to hold down a job and whatever job he does get he seems to be exploited by his employer."
REALLY! Reading between the lines of what she is saying: It seems to me she is pushy and very demanding. She says, "he cannot hold down a job" (but he is getting work)... She says, "whatever job he does get he seems to be exploited by his employer" (What does this even mean? It seems he may be afflicted by ole "Double Bind: Damned if you do, Damned if you don't!" He may also be under-reporting his income to his girlfriend and socking-away a portion of his money for himself i.e. funds for when he exits the relationship.) I have seen this exact situation played out many times.
Yes, he says that I want too much. That I'm too demanding. Look, he was working in sales and his boss was exploiting him. I told him to find another job which he did. When he lost that job he blamed me saying that he should have stayed in his first job. Everything is my fault and he never takes responsibility for anything."
"I told him to find another job..."WHAT?"" She sounds like a control freak. My question: How was his bosses exploiting him? This seems like a red flag. Meaning, she may believe he should be getting higher paying jobs. (See above, comment: He may very well be taking responsibility: for HIMSELF.)
"All I want is for him to be able to put some money away so that when we get married we can have some furniture and a stable financial future together... She would be a good modern fit for Proverbs 31:10-31."
This woman is not a good fit for Proverbs 31:10-31, modern or not? Yes, she is financially astute, but it seems she is more focused on getting married with furniture and finances intact (which is good). But, what about all of the other things she is peeved about her guy, i.e. his being a slob. Will her demands cease or continue... because she said, "All I want is for him to be able to put some money away...!
As for the Proverbs 31:10-31, she and her high sex drive would not be living with this guy. Nor would she be giving you (counselor) the goo-goo eyes.
I would not be surprised if this guy is biding his time until he leaves her.
Like I said earlier, I have seen this scenario many times during the last 22 years.
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