I rarely post two letters from readers back to back, but I received an email today that is both time-sensitive and potentially instructive to readers.
I’ll begin with a confession. The real name of the writer is very unusual, and after reading her letter I had a hunch I wanted to confirm. Sure enough, she is indexed in Google images thanks to social media profiles. It is as I suspected. She is a hard 9, at least, if your taste runs to Kate Upton on a good day. I don’t mean to objectify her, but I think she falls victim to a mentality that is common among beautiful women. It may sound counterintuitive, but beautiful women often have to make a special effort to land a good man, initiating intimacy, providing encouragement and offering reassurance along the way.
My advice would be the same in any case, but her looks are undoubtedly a factor in the dynamic between them.
Dear Susan,
Hi, your blog always gives such insightful advice on relationship issues, and I would love some right now because I’m in a difficult position with the first man I’ve liked in a long time. I’m 22, he’s 25.
I’ve been dating him for around two months now. I ended things with a guy this summer and was deeply depressed for a while, which is why I didn’t want to get emotionally attached too soon. There was a bit of imbalance – he took me out to nice dinners, walked me home, didn’t even make a move. When we started sleeping together, things were great but I was still not completely accommodating – I didn’t offer him coffee/breakfast in the morning, which I kind of regret now. I’m an introverted person and I don’t express emotions very well. Raised that way I guess. Nevertheless, we continued dating and he’d text and call very often.
I haven’t seen him in person for around 3 weeks. It’s sometimes been difficult matching our schedules (he’s working, I’m a student), and I have been travelling the past week. He said he wanted to take me to a lovely dinner the night I came back from an overseas trip. I was jetlagged when back and had a heavy lunch so I suggested a drink instead, and he accepted. I dozed off, got back to him a couple of hours later and said we could meet 45 mins later at which point it would be 10.45. He said it would be “a little too late” because he had to get up early for work, but we could meet the next day. I was pissed – that drink would probably lead to him coming back with me, he hasn’t seen me in 3 weeks, what guy says no to that because he’d get six hours rather than eight? I was so annoyed I said I was busy the next few days. He told me to “let him know when I could see him”.
So when I was out Thursday night I texted him (very late, early hours) asking if he was out too. For a weekday, I figured he might have been in bed. I got a reply the next morning. Friendly, as usual, but he hasn’t initiated anything since.
Worst part – Saturday night was a party hosted by a friend of his – an all night dinner and drinks. He asked me about a month ago and even convinced me to stay in town a far more days to attend. Come Saturday, I heard nothing. I’m just assuming he went to the party without me. I suppose most girls would text and go “what’s going on with that party??”. But I always assume a defensive position towards men – I think until the point of exclusive, the initiatives should be theirs. Plus, I did make an “initiative” Thursday night by texting first.
I was angry and in my irrational rage, I figured this was “finished from my side”, deleted him off facebook and deleted our text message history. That was yesterday, I assume he’s seen it by now, but he hasn’t said anything. I am twisting in agony trying to figure what the reason for his silence might have been… Whether someone said something about me. I can’t figure why, I’m not known as promiscuous, and I don’t think there is anything awful that may surface.
So as you can see I’m going out of my mind. I like the guy, and I know I acted irrationally when deleting him. But his behaviour was really schizo – he was all over me and seemed so genuinely interested, and then shut down on Saturday. I feel like it would be stupid to contact him now, it will seem as if deleting him was a provocation and now I’m “giving in”? I feel like it would give me an instant lower hand. Should I just wait it out?
Am I being completely crazy? Will this end right now if I don’t make a move? Or will I look pathetic? Or is it the case that if he likes me enough, I will hear from him?
An ex boyfriend accused me of always causing unnecessary drama. If that seems the case, please let me know.
Anne
Dear Anne,
It sounds like you’re a regular reader, in which case you’ve seen my posts about avoiding players, and also my posts about the need for a woman to escalate emotionally when a man does get through her filter and she wants to be in a committed relationship with him.
I’m going to cut straight to the chase here.
You have been employing the Principle of Least Interest with such success that you convinced Stephen you are not interested in him. To be fair, you describe yourself as having been hurt fairly recently and feeling somewhat self-protective. It’s hard to escalate emotionally while deliberately delaying intimacy. Being introverted and not emotionally expressive makes this more challenging as well.
It sounds like Stephen was happy to go all out in pursuing you, putting in most of the effort. You already have a sense that you did not give him the reinforcement that would have helped to seal the deal early on, as you mention having regrets about remaining aloof, even after sex. However, I see some poor judgment calls here on your part within the last week or so that I don’t believe you fully recognize. At the risk of being very hard on you, I’m going to highlight them in hopes that you can learn from this experience, whether things work out with Stephen or not.
You did not act eager to reunite with him when you returned from Miami.
I understand that you were jet lagged, and I’m sure he did too. You might have rescheduled, explaining that you were dying to see him but wanted to be at your best. You could also have mentioned that you simply could not function without a couple of hours sleep, would he be amenable to a late drink?
Instead it sounds like you dismissed his plan because you were not particularly hungry (bad call) and then left him waiting and wondering until 10 p.m. That was not very considerate of his time, and it may have played a role in his declining at that point. Or he may have calculated that you would both have a much better time with less pressure by doing it the next day instead. Maybe he wanted to enjoy your company for an evening instead of racing home from the bar to have sex before an early alarm.
You felt rejected, so you punished him.
If a man is rejecting you, punishing him for doing so is not a good strategy for exciting his interest. Had you agreed to the next night, you would likely have had a passionate reunion. Instead, you told him you did not want to see him. His response that you should let him know indicates hurt feelings and hurt pride.
You sought to increase your control over him.
After turning him down, and without letting him know when you were available to see him, and how much you wanted to see him, you texted him while out late on a work night. This served to remind him that you are a carefree student who can be out and about getting attention from other men while he is required to get his sleep before another grueling day at the office. I imagine he woke in the morning, felt peeved, and his resentment grew throughout the day.
Note that you have still not texted to “let him know when you could see him.” You have only texted to convey your fabulousness and desirability on a night when he was unlikely to go out.
You stubbornly waited for him to break.
You entered into a pissing match over who would blink first. It should have been you! Why do you always assume a defensive posture with men? Why are they required to do all the work? You’re bound to intimidate the hell out of most men as it is – they’re going to need some positive reinforcement to keep going! And they’re very likely to assume that they’re unlikely to hold your interest.
Deleting him from facebook probably signalled to him that you have zero interest in him whatsoever, and want all reminders of your association gone.
In short, I don’t think his behavior has been schizo or the least bit unreasonable. I think you’ve been acting like a bit of a spoiled brat. (I say this with a maternal affection.) I don’t know whether this is salvageable, but if you really look at Stephen and see a potential father for your children, here is what I suggest you do:
Go crawling to him on your hands and knees.
Stephen,
I regret the way things have been between us for the last week. I accept responsibility for doing a very poor job of letting you know how much I wanted to see you upon my return. I have enjoyed our time together very much and I’d like to set things right. Are you free tomorrow night? Would you like to come over for a drink and we can talk about it?
Missing you,
Anne
If he is kind but says no, you’ll have time for soul searching. If he is a jerk and really was playing you in some way, he’ll be rude and unresponsive, in which case you just got rid of a bad guy. If he says yes, you’re back in the game. Respond graciously no matter what.
No more silent treatment, it’s time to make a little drama here (the good kind – as in, a dramatic gesture to surprise and delight him).
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@HanSolo
Absolutely. It is a question of what we require, and our expectations are that adults may not finish their education and be settled into a career until their mid to late 20s. We focus a lot these days on the delayed maturation of males, but it’s true for many females as well.
Say: “I spent a long-ass time being single before getting a relationship. I don’t even know where it is appropriate to say where my single period begins! ”
Funny how, by this criteria, the women count, but the men don’t.
Someone: Women are attracted to behaviors that signify status/dominance in men.
SW: Women are attracted to men who signal “good genes.” Looks are very important to women. They look for symmetry, strength, and signs of a strong immune system. If you don’t accept that, you’re kidding yourself.
Me: Yep. I’d agree that the first thing women notice are the good gene markers, followed by prestige, the social dominance.
@Mike C
First of all, I will once again note that the goal posts have been moved. Rollo and Roissy both advocate for the instillation of dread as a preventative practice to be instituted and perpetrated from the start. This is what I have strenuously objected to all along. It has not been promoted by them as something as a last ditch effort to save a failing relationship, or to save a marriage to keep a family together, as Vox mentioned.
Because it kills the bad cells, right? So what is the source of the sickness when a woman loses attraction for her husband? The treatment cannot succeed unless it gets rid of the problem at its root. Has he let himself go? Is he uncommunicative? Does he work all the time and leave her on her own? Is he not an involved father? Has the sex become rote? Does he lack ambition? Is his career faltering due to his own lack of performance? Is he moody? Whatever the cause for her disinterest, that is what must be addressed. There is a reason she stopped wanting him. Fixing that is the only thing that might work, if it is not already too late.
I have yet to hear a single example of how men can convincingly conjure up attracted women in this situation. We hear a lot from men here about how few men women find attractive at all, and now we’re supposed to believe that a guy who cannot sustain the attraction of his spouse has a bunch of beauties waiting to take her place? It just doesn’t make sense to me. How would you go about instilling dread if your fiance confessed she no longer found you attractive and no longer wanted to have sex?
I have not lost an argument with VD. He is wrong, he just hasn’t admitted (or perhaps understood) it yet. The fact that Vox admits he’s never had to use dread proves my point. If a man has high SMV in his wife’s eyes, dread is unnecessary. If he doesn’t, she can’t feel dread.
@deti
I always read your posts and consider them thoughtfully, even when I disagree. I do not understand your getting butthurt over my saying something I have said to you on many previous occasions. I think your ideas about women are seriously off and not justified. I’ve explained why in each case. If you can substantiate your arguments I’m always willing to listen.
The only thing you left out is that when a woman demonstrates that she does in fact work differently, she is branded an “outlier.” It sounds like some dystopian designation for the hinterlands. An outcast, a weirdo. Or else she’s treated as the Blessed Madonna of Mating, the one woman ever born without the sin of hypergamy.
LMAO. You should do a post where we play a game in which each female commenter emails you to say if she views herself as normal, an outlier or a madonna. She also guesses how the guys will see her. Then the guys rate each woman. You could give out HUS t-shirts as prizes to the women who guess the male view of her the most accurately.
Confidence is the most important attribute to attract women, and men who are born into well-off families have a confidence other men don’t. My impression is that things can go into a positive or negative circle from a young age. A lot of men link their self-esteem and self-worth to their ability to get women, if they do well early – they continue to do well.
Anne,
I’m hoping I can get you to flesh this out some more. As an extremely hot young woman (per Susan’s evaluation) I think it would be instructive to hear *exactly* how you go about evaluating a man’s confidence. The more specific you can be here the better. What exactly are you observing and assessing to make the determination a man is confident versus lacks confidence.
I’ll say you are very correct about your last few sentences. There is a virtuous circle and/or negative feedback cycle depending on which train a guy gets on at a young age. And I think for most men….probably close to all actually, self-esteem is tied to the ability to “get girls”.
J, we could rate the male commenters similarly! Pretty much, we all suck, except for… Wait, who?
Well we don’t know, because I have never seen or heard of a single instance of the effective use of dread to improve a relationship over the long-term.
My interest was in calling him out as the slacker punk of poor character that he is and dismissing him from my blog. It worked.
I believe Dread can make women jealous and anxious, as Rollo reports success with this in his dealings with Mrs. Tomassi. I do not understand the need to use it in a healthy relationship where mutual attraction is present. It strikes me as an unnecessarily cruel thing to do to someone you love. I also don’t believe it reflects a good understanding of female psychology. Roissy coined the term, and wrote the strategy. He has recently openly stated that Chateau Heartiste is geared to what he called “cad Game.” Dread is a tool for cads. Even its author would agree.
@ Susan
Ahh yes. I’ve heard that before. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IRejectYourReality
There’s also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
@ OTC
There’s always Megaman to white-knight when needed.
@Deti
I’m so glad you found this quote, I was going to search for it myself! Note my description of what worked. My husband spoke to me with calm reason. No games, no tricks, no manipulation. In reviewing Roissy and Rollo’s writings, it is clear that he did the opposite of what they recommend. He motivated me to change by negatively reinforcing my behavior in precisely the way I have been recommending in this thread. I may have felt a sense of dread as a result, but never at any point did he attempt to make me anxious or jealous, especially by reminding me that he had options, which is the cornerstone of instilling dread. As always, intent is key.
I may have misspoken here, but if you read the quote again, you’ll see that there was no intention on his part to make me worry that he would leave me for another woman. If he had, I would have responded by withdrawing further, not having more sex. What he did was state his love for me, commitment to our family and our marriage, and state his expectations. I never for one moment feared he might leave, because I knew what I had to do to make him happy, and was able to do that literally within a few days.
@Bastiat Blogger
Yikes, that would never have worked for me. My HUS endorsed husband was a 28 year old Wall St. hire with a string of ONSs and several girlfriends in his past. Introverted, yes, but smart, funny and possessing a wide range of interests. He never asked my number, is relatively more liberal about promiscuity than I am, for both sexes. He works in an industry that is anything but safe and stable. It is fairly technical in that it requires considerable understanding of complex instruments, and he’s exceptionally good at it, which has led to high status. Oh, and I almost forgot – he is a beta male.
That is what I want for my readers.
Your description actually sounds more like something a lot of the guys on here would like to believe.
First of all, I will once again note that the goal posts have been moved. Rollo and Roissy both advocate for the instillation of dread ****as a preventative practice to be instituted and perpetrated from the start.****
Well, that isn’t my position so I would agree with you that “instilling dread” as a preventative practice in an otherwise healthy relationship is wrong and counterproductive. From that perspective, I’d note that one component of healthy is one where the woman fully appreciates and is highly attracted to the man who has chosen and committed to her. Instilling dread only becomes necessary if she gets complacent.
To my recollection, Rollo’s position wasn’t as you describe so I went back and read his post which I am going to link to since you brought it up:
http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/dread-games/
Lets be clear, the vast majority of women are secure enough not to allow this condition to get the better of them, and it’s in the extreme cases I’ve used above that real neuroticism flourishes. Contrary to popular belief I’m not an advocate of the Dark Triad methodologies of Game. Not because I think they’re ineffective, but rather because, with the right art of Game they’re not even needed.**** Only in extreme cases are the dark arts to be employed****, and if a situation necessitates their use it’s important for a guy to understand that a line has been crossed with a woman who necessitated their use.
So yes, you should be seeking to reassure an LTR of your love and devotion,
I don’t know any other way to read that and come up with your characterization. You are probably correct about Roissy, but I don’t read him literally and actually I don’t read his blog much anymore.
Because it kills the bad cells, right? So what is the source of the sickness when a woman loses attraction for her husband? The treatment cannot succeed unless it gets rid of the problem at its root. Has he let himself go? Is he uncommunicative? Does he work all the time and leave her on her own? Is he not an involved father? Has the sex become rote? Does he lack ambition? Is his career faltering due to his own lack of performance? Is he moody? Whatever the cause for her disinterest, that is what must be addressed. There is a reason she stopped wanting him. Fixing that is the only thing that might work, if it is not already too late.
I agree with some of this. Many guys would benefit from running basically Athol’s MAP. It isn’t the only thing though. In my view, the main place you are going wrong is in underestimating the complacency some women in LTRs/marriages might drift into, and it is only by a shock to the system of losing to other options that is the catalyst for course correction from bad behavior to good behavior. I’d actually agree with J that in many cases, staying in the relationship doesn’t make sense even if it is marriage, and might as well cut your losses and move on. Screw playing games and instead of displaying options, simply end it, and go exercise them. This gets trickier possibly if there are dependent children involved and lots of financial entanglements. In the current legal system, many wives have their husbands “over the barrel” so to speak in terms of divorcing them so whether to leave or play the games of brinksmanship to “course correct” the relationship is a difficult choice.
How would you go about instilling dread if your fiance confessed she no longer found you attractive and no longer wanted to have sex?
I’m assuming you are asking me directly so I’ll answer. The first thing I would do is elevate to a top priority getting my bodyfat back down to 12-15%. After that, I’d switch gears to being more flirtatious and I’d also be more responsive and engaging to IOIs which is a mode that I’ve basically completely turned off. I have limited interaction these days with other women especially while in the presence of my fiancee. To the extent I do, I’m polite and matter of fact, never flirtatious. There is one girl we encounter regularly who I am pretty sure likes me, but I don’t give her anything to run with. Under your hypothetical, I’d start playing that interaction differently.
INTJ: “There’s always Megaman to white-knight when needed. ”
I think BB and Han are on the +1 list, Mega just says what they wanna hear (even if it is mostly true, things ain’t so bad; we just disagree on tactics).
I enjoy my position here as the well-reviled man who went off-reservation. Am I good or evil? It’s fun to watch the wheels spin and the gaskets blow…
I do not understand the need to use it in a healthy relationship where mutual attraction is present. It strikes me as an unnecessarily cruel thing to do to someone you love.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this statement.
Yup, she’ll eat him for breakfast. Since she is generally not focused on LTRs, much less marriage or having a family, she is best served by her alpha male counterpart, who shares her priorities and most likely her sociosexuality. Explorers mate well with Explorers, and not well with anyone else.
J, we could rate the male commenters similarly! Pretty much, we all suck, except for… Wait, who?
Actually, I have a soft spot in my heart for many of you guys.
Bb: ‘the archetype for a HUS-endorsed husband appears to be a 25-27 year old STEM nerdling of limited sexual experience, introverted Nice Guy/beta personality trait cluster, N=1-3 with extreme intolerance for promiscuity, and safe, stable, SAMH-compatible technical job.”
Sue: “Yikes, that would never have worked for me.”
Yeah, we have to definitely purge the earth of such men. An N of below average and strict idealism for LTRs is a definite dealbreaker! Sleep around, guys, your respect hinges on it.
@Emily
There is indeed, and none of the men here can bring themselves to defend Roissy’s preemptive “dread game,” so they’re only addressing the marriage with a death rattle.
When I argue against Instilling Dread I am referring to Roissy’s Dread post. When I hear men here advocating it in marriage, I find myself wondering how it might work if my husband suddenly told me his Russian ex gave good head. Or turned off his cell phone on alternate days. Or admired the labia of another woman. I would literally think he had lost his mind.
There’s always Megaman to white-knight when needed.
Haha. Spot on.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9l0jnhbyoxbe7oi/internet_white_knight_colored_4350.jpg
@Russ
Exactly. And I’m not buying the notion that women do not respond well to this. This is exactly how I dealt with toddlers when they misbehaved, and they understood perfectly.
Yeah, we have to definitely purge the earth of such men. An N of below average and strict idealism for LTRs is a definite dealbreaker! Sleep around, guys, your respect hinges on it.
LOL…got to love the mixed messages.
What it boils down to, if you are handsome nice guy beta who happens to luck into casual sex from sexually aggressive women, you can retain you “good guy” card. But if you are a guy who does even one iota of planning, systematizing, tactical analysis to get casual sex than you are a “bad man”.
@Susan:
-Chemotherapy makes you sick, but it gets rid of the cancer.
“Because it kills the bad cells, right? So what is the source of the sickness when a woman loses attraction for her husband? The treatment cannot succeed unless it gets rid of the problem at its root. (…) if it is not already too late. ”
THIS is excactly the core of the problem with the, how should I call them, the manosphere supporters. It is based on their biased view and lack of knowledge of women, and their lack of discerning judgement between different kind of women, largely based on one negative experience with one particular woman.
@Mike C
“probably close to all actually, self-esteem is tied to the ability to “get girls”.
To some extent yes, but I wouldn’t reduce male self esteem to just this, which is only the vain side to any man’s self esteem. But yes, let’s not kid ourselves, we all have it, just like women have their own vain side, which translates differently (see the chapter on stringing along, friend zoning, etc).
And to close that dreadful discussion about dread or no dread. Applying dread games to your woman IS a form of imposing your will by force (this also what I meant with the wrong piece of the puzzle being “forced” in) ending in having someone put into submission and at your mercy. This not only humanely wrong, but also dangerous.
We all have a sadistic trait deep somewhere, and nothing brings it out better than knowing you have someone at your mercy…. I prefer to keep mine in check.
You all will never guess what I’m watching on TV right now. ELP!
I didn’t read the book or see it in the theater. As suspected it would be, it’s a huge pantload of self-indulgent BS, but I’m enjoying watching Julia Roberts eat Italian food and wear saris. Right now , I wish I had a meatball sandwich and a salwar kameez. And an elephant because she’s petting an elephant.
I also caught the last half hour of that Fireproof movie that people are always on about. I can’t believe what a simplistic view of marriage is espoused in that movie.
Now, Julie is in Bali listening to some craziness about smiling in her liver. The scenery is pretty as is Javier Bardem, who just literally ran into her. Talk about “meeting cute”! This is turning into a rom com. I hate rom coms.
To some extent yes, but I wouldn’t reduce male self esteem to just this, which is only the vain side to any man’s self esteem. But yes, let’s not kid ourselves, we all have it, just like women have their own vain side, which translates differently (see the chapter on stringing along, friend zoning, etc).
Right….I didn’t mean to suggest that 100% of male self-esteem is tied to being successful with women. More broadly speaking, I’d say male self-esteem is very connected to what I would call skillful competence at producing successful outcomes or high achievement. Now that could manifest itself in any number of different ways. For some guys, maybe it means being a great Halo player, for other guys being one of the strongest guys in the gym, etc. Just about every guy has something that his self-esteem is tied to in terms of being skilled at something. The guy who has nothing in that regard is dangerous because he has nothing to live for. But in any case, being successful with “getting girls” is part of the equation. It is why guys will pay $5,000 to presumably learn how to be successful at “getting girls” while no such comparable market opportunity exists for women to “get guys”.
@Mike C
I recall a different Rollo post, where he specifically discusses his effective use of Dread in keeping Mrs. Tomassi on her toes. He describes flirting with other women in her presence, and offers his opinion that it is both useful and powerful to directly cause anxiety and jealousy in one’s partner. I asked him specifically about that description earlier in the thread, but he did not reply. Perhaps he has taken it down.
Here is his famous post:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/dread/
There are two ways to guarantee a healthy relationship. Meet your soulmate. Instill dread.
Women respond viscerally in their vagina area to unpredictability, mixed signals, danger, and drama in spite of their best efforts to convince themselves otherwise. Managing your relationship in such a way that she is left with a constant, gnawing feeling of impending doom will do more for your cause than all the Valentine’s Day cards and expertly performed tongue love in the world. Like it or not, the threat of a looming breakup, whether the facts justify it or not, will spin her into a paranoid estrogen-fueled tizzy, and she’ll spend every waking second thinking about you, thinking about the relationship, thinking about how to fix it. Her love for you will blossom under these conditions. Result: she works harder to please you.
The key for the man is to adopt a posture of blase emotional distance alternated with loving tenderness.
This is the post I have always argued against. It is the post that inspired Rollo, presumably. Roissy invented Dread Game, he defined it. It bears no resemblance to the practice of not putting up with poor treatment or making your expectations clear when a relationship is in trouble.
I have no interest in debating Dread Lite. The debate is about Roissy’s codified method for guaranteeing a “healthy relationship.”
But few men in LTRs actually have options – hell, most men didn’t have options when they were single, right? Only alphas have options? How is the beta who has lost his wife’s attraction supposed to come up with these options?
You’ve just admitted that you would actually need to become more attractive to run Dread. If you became more attractive, you would likely solve the problem. Even now, you state that you are getting IOIs from one woman the two of you see regularly. Surely your fiancee is aware of her attraction to you? IOW, you have one option, and she’d be a fool to be oblivious to that woman’s attraction. That real option, rather than some kind of “pretend” option, is part of what keeps your fiance attracted to you.
It’s a question of preselection, which is why I’m surprised the men here are not getting it. You can’t fake preselection. Even PUAs have to find some decent women to parade around with.
I was simply pointing out that it would be hypocritical for me to make such an endorsement since I made a very different choice myself, and in fact, would never have been found acceptable by the man BB describes.
This is not some conservative Christian blog. I’ll happily endorse any man who is capable of long-term commitment without cheating.
Ha, the newest post is dedicated to Megaman, who has done more research to back up his claims that the lot of you put together. He does not suffer from confirmation bias, or have an agenda of any kind. In fact, it was his thoughtful prodding that got me to take a new look at the state of relationships on college campuses. And I have reversed my previous beliefs as a result.
If you can do it without deceit of any kind, that’s OK. Most men who scheme to get casual sex use deceit as a primary tool.
But few men in LTRs actually have options – hell, most men didn’t have options when they were single, right? Only alphas have options? How is the beta who has lost his wife’s attraction supposed to come up with these options?
I’m not an expert on Athol’s system but I do believe the lynchpin/starting point is actually boosting your attractiveness. I agree with you that creating real options out of thin air is ridiculous.
If you became more attractive, you would likely solve the problem. Even now, you state that you are getting IOIs from one woman the two of you see regularly. Surely your fiancee is aware of her attraction to you?
Honestly don’t know. Although generally speaking, I do believe women are much more “in tune” with sort of the dynamics that go unsaid, I think it is possible to be oblivious to things if you aren’t looking for them especially if the other person’s display is somewhat understated. With a woman, there is that fine line where she is just being friendly to where she is perhaps being overly friendly because she likes you. Not always easy to call that one perfectly.
INTJ (748),
I think part of the issue is that the female nerdlings and the male nerdlings often have separate interests and social circles. I was recently at an anime convention and I couldn’t help but notice that there were way more girls than guys. I remember thinking that they should merge the event with Comic Con. :p. IMO, it’s more a logistical issue than anything.
Mike C #777
Totally agree.
“while no such comparable market opportunity exists for women to “get guys”.”
Too bad, I’m sure there’s a sizeable market niche for it.
… what about the countless self-help books out there? (The Rules, He’s Just Not that Into You etc etc.). Lots of the advice is terrible, but they’re all about how to ‘get guys’.
Also, FWIW, Bestiat’s “ideal HUS male” sounds like somebody that I’d like.
I will once again note that the goal posts have been moved. Rollo and Roissy both advocate for the instillation of dread as a preventative practice to be instituted and perpetrated from the start. This is what I have strenuously objected to all along. It has not been promoted by them as something as a last ditch effort to save a failing relationship, or to save a marriage to keep a family together, as Vox mentioned.
No, the goal posts haven’t been moved at all. You’ve claimed the tactic does not work and cannot be a part of a healthy relationship. Rollo, Roissy, and I all disagree; the distinction between what you’re saying Rollo and Roissy have said and what I’ve said is merely the timing of the application. You’ve confused intent and effect as well as functionality and application. You’ve also cited your father as a primary example of the inefficacy of Dread then claimed that he never used it. And you’ve drawn a quixotic distinction between Dread that is based on real threats and Dread that is based on imaginary ones.
I don’t know if this is striking too close to home or what, Susan, but this is not your usual calm and collected analysis.
He is wrong, he just hasn’t admitted (or perhaps understood) it yet. The fact that Vox admits he’s never had to use dread proves my point. If a man has high SMV in his wife’s eyes, dread is unnecessary. If he doesn’t, she can’t feel dread.
No, he certainly hasn’t understood that. But my not using it proves nothing; I don’t use negs or numerous other Game tactics either. If a man is perceived to have sufficiently high SMV, Dread is unnecessary… at the moment. Rollo and Roissy are simply advocating the use of it as a preventative measure. Furthermore, you’re failing to understand that Dread is a means of elevating one’s SMV in the woman’s eyes; it’s basically an ex post facto version of pre-selection. Would you find it less objectionable if it was termed post-selection?
He describes flirting with other women in her presence, and offers his opinion that it is both useful and powerful to directly cause anxiety and jealousy in one’s partner.
Are those women invented? In light of your earlier comments, how can this be Dread if the threat is real and not invented. More importantly, how is this any different than the behavior of your father, who you informed us never used Dread?
Yeah they get used so much to being right that they cannot conceive ever being wrong. I particularly think that the day you declare yourself a teacher and never wrong is the first day of your intellectual death because you cannot learn anything else if you think you already know it all.
I see this behavior most often in academics and those whose lives are structured in such a way that they experience no consequences for being wrong. It’s pretty much impossible to have that attitude in finance or economics; it’s only a matter of time before you’re wrong and there will definitely be consequences.
never though it was anyone’s job but mine to keep me entertained.
You are wise beyond your years. It isn’t. But many women don’t understand that.
Always, ALWAYS, have a comfortable couch. For general couch purposes.
Temporarily pulling away from the situation for effect, whether it is going and sleeping on the couch or sleeping in the guest bedroom is a BETA move. I have a friend or two who does this from time to time and he is absolutely of lower SS rank. Basically, it’s a feminine, passive-aggressive response. “I am going to deprive you of my wonderful presence until you are nice to me.”
By way of contrast, compare that action with the High Alpha move of kicking a girl out of her own bed, in her apartment, just so one can sleep more comfortably on an initial overnight visit. That is supreme confidence and the tightest of Indifference Game.
What would your idea of those two men be if you saw a) a man come out of his own apartment with blankets and a pillow, asking if he could sleep on your couch because his wife was being mean, versus b) a woman come out of her own apartment, asking if she could sleep on your couch because she’d been kicked out of her own bed by some guy she’d picked up? Who is the Alpha, (a) or (b)?
It would only be Dread Game if you called a woman, then left the house and spent the night away from it. Or, I suppose, if you slept in the guest bedroom after inviting a woman over and having her spend the night in there with you.
A similar sentiment from an old dead white male:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
(For you landlubbers, he’s talking about high tide and low tide; the ‘flood’ is high tide.)
“… what about the countless self-help books out there? (The Rules, He’s Just Not that Into You etc etc.). Lots of the advice is terrible, but they’re all about how to ‘get guys’.”
True, as well as those countless girl’s/women’s magazine which, besides promoting fashion names, do mostly just that.
I’m sorry, but I have no sympathy for complaints from someone who won the genetic lottery. They have so many advantages compared to everyone else. I’m speaking from experience here- beautiful women will always get favorable treatment and will always receive attention from the more desirable guys. Sure, they have challenges too (no one’s life is perfect), but it is so much easier for them than for others.
If a beautiful woman has even half of their act together, they will have a far better life than an average looking woman who has it 90% better. And don’t get me started on the women who have great personalities, but were born with physical characteristics that will always hold them back.
As a guy, I know how I can get caught up in someone’s beauty. Sometimes I wish I could be like the main character in “Shallow Hal,” where I only saw the good in people and not their physical characteristics. But it’s not that easy.
All these dreadnoughts in their lines … to dethrone … the Guns of Navarone …
@VD
But timing is important – Roissy advocates dread from the get go.
the threat of a looming breakup, whether the facts justify it or not, will spin her into a paranoid estrogen-fueled tizzy
If you can’t see anything wrong with that from a moral POV, there’s no point in discussing it further.
You are still misunderstanding. My father was a natural and did have a lot of options, but he did not deliberately employ a strategy of making my mother aware of those options. He didn’t need to. That is the difference. It is significant that as the wife of a man who had options and was responsive to other women, his behavior did not create a desire on the of my mother to keep her man happy, it created enormous anger and resentment, and she frequently froze him out. His SMV, had he not been an attention seeker, would have made her feel that she had won the prize. Instead she was humiliated on a regular basis. So, to summarize, he did not have an intention to create a paranoid tizzy in my mother or threaten a looming breakup. He just enjoyed the attention of women. What his behavior did produce was anger rather than dread.
The whole point of Roissy’s post is to create imaginary threats. It’s all duplicity. There’s not a single recommendation in his post about the male’s real SMV or desirability. The idea is to make the female imagine a threat.
As an aside, I do not find it credible that many men whose wives no longer find them attractive have any options whatsoever.
The difference is that in Rollo’s scenario, the male actively seeks and cultivates flirtatious relationships for the express purpose of causing his wife anxiety and jealousy. That would be thoughtless and devoid of empathy even if the male did initiate the flirtation, as with my father. It is sadistic and selfish to purposely create that dynamic for the express purpose of inducing paranoia.
@Benton:
“I’m sorry, but I have no sympathy for complaints from someone who won the genetic lottery. They have so many advantages compared to everyone else. I’m speaking from experience here- beautiful women will always get favorable treatment and will always receive attention from the more desirable guys”
I also totally agree with that, and didn’t want to put that up for the sake of discussion, hence my more than moderate empathy for mademoiselle good looks Anne from a likely Paris-seizième or Neuilly background whose dramatic problems are now temporarily limited to break ups in seemingly superficial relationships caused by text messages or fb deleted items tricks.
I do not want to sound too harsh but, sometimes those kind of “sissy” problems are a bit exasperating given the current economical situation.
Anyway, it is nonetheless true that “too obviously” good looking girls have much more of a hard work to do in filtering in a discerning way through the fog of all those male propositions.
I hope you are joking. Does she sleep on the floor next to the bed? Will you let her come up to the mattress for sex in the morning?
Any woman who didn’t throw your ass out on the spot is pathetic. I don’t deny there are some pathetic women.
@Benton
I don’t believe your sympathy was requested. The post merely describes a real dynamic in the SMP and attempts to explore that dynamic. I am interested in the way people mate. Believe it or not, that even includes the beautiful people.
Susan, my composite character was based on various recommendations that have been put forth at HUS over the past several months—STEM, Beta, avoiding high N males, finding guys who were disgusted by hook-up culture, etc.
I have a suspicion that you are a closet Explorer and that this occasionally leaks out into posts. You have your own appetites, but you also realize that a Mr. HUS Wall Street/Wharton/structured financial products guy is typically—in this SMP—going to be a wild, uncontrollable STR beast where most women are concerned, and so you don’t generally recommend that template to today’s college girls.
I have frequently thought that you should have both a public HUS with safe and conservative recommendations, and a more private sanctum sanctorum version—safe from the hypervigilant, greedy eyes and keyboard-poised hands of male readers like myself—where elite alpha girls can discuss topics that would be considered too risky and controversial for open dissemination. Perhaps your focus groups serve this purpose…?
Susan:
VD is right. You’re not evaluating the Dread issue with objectivity or, candidly, with credibility.
Please understand: My interest in this issue is purely academic. I know how things go when heated discussions, this blog and Christmas all converge. So I’m going to leave this here and wish all of you a very merry Christmas.
I’m pressing on this because VD has hit on something here: Dread aims for a specific result or effect. This is what the male is interested in: undertaking certain conduct to achieve a desired result. Susan, you on the other hand appear to be far more interested in the INTENT or the MENTAL STATE, the “mens rea” if you will, WHICH MOTIVATES the behavior and not so much what results from it. This is where you’re getting bogged down, I think, because the intent really doesn’t matter as long as the outcome is reached.
Game, and male sexual behavior, seeks desired results. The intent is much less relevant to us.
susan, you did use your dad as an example of Dread.
From “The Sad Reality of Using Anxiety to Generate Attraction”, March 15, 2012, Hooking Up Smart:
“Apparently our man is lining up alternatives, “just in case.” We know he’s desirable, other women lighting up when he’s around tells us that. What we wish we didn’t know is that he’s milking it, wants more of it, is getting off on it. It’s deeply humiliating and painful for a woman in love.
“A man who does this is displaying low relationship fitness, in one of two ways:
1.He is genuinely interested in generating sexual attraction with other women, even while professing to love you.
2.He is using this behavior as a ploy to keep you on your toes.
“If he’s employing the first strategy, he’s a cad. Enough said.
“If he’s employing the second strategy, he is operating from a mindset of lack, or scarcity. This is ironic, since he is attempting to secure your sexual attraction by conveying abundance. However, he is waging the battle to secure the Position of Least Interest, which means that his win is your loss. There must always be a winner and a loser. That is a very poor paradigm for a successful relationship.
“How do I know this? Because I watched this dynamic with my own parents. My father is a highly charismatic and witty man. He is a great storyteller. The first full sentence I ever uttered, as I fished an olive out of his martini, was to tell my mother to go wash his shirts and leave us alone. My entire life I have watched people drawn to my father like moths to a flame.
“Women always flirted with my father, and he always flirted back. I recall the late 60s, lying awake while waiting for my parents to return from a party, then the muffled sound of my mother’s weeping as they returned and she spoke of the humiliation of watching this spectacle. Once I peered out of my bedroom to watch the grownups in our living room, and saw my father being dragged into the middle of the room to dance with a neighbor, who threw her arms around his neck. He was enjoying himself. At 10, I knew how my mother would feel about it, and it made me feel sick.
“I was perpetually afraid of learning that my parents were divorcing. It was clear to me, even as a child, that my father would not stop, even though it hurt my mother. His own mother had left when he was three, so perhaps that explained his insensitivity and need for female validation. Once my best friend told me how much she loved my dad, how everyone loved my dad, but that she was glad he wasn’t her dad. How I longed for a boring and staid father when I was a child!”
And yet you’ve said on this thread, at 579;
“This is a misinterpretation of what I have shared here. I am actually very close to my father and see him as high value. I believe he was desperately unhappy with a bipolar wife, which is understandable. However, he never used the tactic of instilling dread. He is extremely charismatic, even now, and has always received a lot of attention from women. My mother was pissed because he enjoyed it, but the attention was a DHV. His soliciting it would have been a DLV.
Why would a man of high value ever need to instill dread?”
I don’t see how these two statements are reconcilable. In the first quote you talked of Roissy-style Dread and then related your dad’s conduct as an example of the very thing you objected to. Why? Because of its EFFECT, on both your mother and on you. Then in the second quote you say that it wasn’t really Dread because he was high value. Well, yes it was, because of its EFFECT. It made you “perpetually afraid of learning that your parents were divorcing”.
WADR, the intent of your father, the operative actor, is really not relevant to a detached understanding of Dread and how it works. The EFFECT is what was important. It got him the desired attention and control.
I want to use my own experience as an example here, which when I look back on it is also an example of Dread (perhaps not Roissy Dread, but still Dread nonetheless). When Mrs. deti told me she wasn’t attracted to me and had been treating me with disrespect that day, I knew I had to do something, because “I love you but I’m not in love with you” was just around the corner. Visions of a process server dropping divorce petitions at my feet in my office, sliding down the razor-lined divorce slide and being forcibly divested of my life’s work danced in my head.
I knew I had to do something, and I wasn’t going to live like that. I simply told her I had no intention of putting up with this anymore, that I would not remain married to a woman who treated me like shit; and that if she did not change her ways and that right soon, the marriage would be over and that the next communications would be through lawyers.
Intent does not matter. I had a desired result in mind: For reasons not really relevant here, I didn’t want a divorce. I wanted and needed to gain some leverage and control to get the marriage back on track, and to change it. If threatening divorce was the way to do it, fine. I didn’t need to create fictional women. I let her know I had (and have) another option, which is to not be married to her anymore. And that option would mean she would be alone and unmarried. It would also mean that a man of my (admittedly) low sociosexual value had divorced and rejected her simply because I had finally sacked up and said “fuck off, I don’t need this shit. I’d rather be alone than be married to a bitch who publicly disrespects me and doesn’t want to sleep with me”. I can’t imagine Mrs. deti would find middle-aged solitude or my beta chump ass rejecting and divorcing her for being intolerable to be optimal or even desirable prospects. What is this if not Dread?
This might be distasteful to you or other readers, but I know I still have that option. I know I can still leave and divorce her if my marriage ever fails to serve my purposes and if Mrs. deti fails to meet my needs. I don’t need other women, real or imagined, to serve those purposes. Whether it’s Roissy-style Dread or not, the EFFECT is the same: to bring the marriage back in line, to give me some hand and leverage, and to gain what I wanted in the marriage (more respect, more sex).
I know you think we’re talking about two different things, but we’re really not. Dread is Dread is Dread. It’s used to bring about an effect. The intent really isn’t important, so long as it brings about the desired effect.
“If you can’t see anything wrong with that from a moral POV, there’s no point in discussing it further.”
Susan, you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. I thought morality didn’t matter on this blog.
@Susan
“Roissy’s preemptive “dread game,” so they’re only addressing the marriage with a death rattle.”
It also has uses on woman who are not worthy of an LTR.
Dread game is for P&D material.
Treat a whore like a whore and a wife like a wife. Simple really.
On another note, if your wife requires dread game to be kept in line.
I’d prefer divorce.
Assuming the problem was not with me (eg. chubby fuck syndrome).
@youknow
“The reality is game is designed for the Anne’s of the world and like it or not, it worked like gangbusters on her.”
+1
Certain principles of game can be used to artificially trigger attraction in lower SMV women. Which is a good thing, kinda like make up can trigger attraction in lower SMV men.
Whats ridiculous is if those low SMV individuals start expecting high SMV treatment continuously.
An SMV 5 woman demanding a man with lots of options is kinda like a beggar demanding $20 bills.
An SMV 5 man demanding a woman with perfect skin is …
Whats even more annoying is we only seem to discuss the SMV 8+ categories which constitute a small percentage of the population yet dominate 90% of the conversation.
Can’t blame people. There human.
@Bastiat Blogger:
“Mr. HUS Wall Street/Wharton/structured financial products guy is typically—in this SMP—going to be a wild, uncontrollable STR beast where most women are concerned, and so you don’t generally recommend that template to today’s college girls. ”
Sure, that is one of the results of today’s over-obsessed money seeking western societies.
I think that “psw” mentioned the “sacred cows” factor in one of those threads at some point.
@youknowwho#800,
Dueling experience.
I wasn’t aware that tailoring your approaches to a given culture constituted gaming. If that’s the case, then the bar is set so low as to be pretty meaningless. While I’m sure that game works like a charm there, the model of female behavior indicating that it would be necessary is simply silly. Culturally speaking, EE, Japan, and Brazil are places where traditionally-western men can clean up without the slightest need for gaming. In Japan particularly, where the culture says *women pursue the men,* the idea that you need game to succeed there is simply ridiculous.
Now, there is a caveat here regarding audience. If you’re referring to somebody who’s been turned into a “feminist victim” and hasn’t Clue One about how the world actually works b/c like a tragic goose he’s been force-fed advice which is literally designed to emasculate him….then any amount of game would be in that man’s favor. But I don’t think you can posit that this man is the norm — perhaps the infection and rot is worse up north.
I don’t think so. Like I said, I didn’t get into a relationship until I was 22. Same thing with Emily.
I view your comment to be equivalent to Where Have All the Good Men Gone?. The good guys and good girls are out there, you just have to know where to look. And/or not ignore them when you find them.
*facepalm*
@VD
“Basically, it’s a feminine, passive-aggressive response. “I am going to deprive you of my wonderful presence until you are nice to me.”
By way of contrast, compare that action with the High Alpha move of kicking a girl out of her own bed, in her apartment, just so one can sleep more comfortably on an initial overnight visit. That is supreme confidence and the tightest of Indifference Game.
What would your idea of those two men be if you saw a) a man come out of his own apartment with blankets and a pillow, asking if he could sleep on your couch because his wife was being mean, versus b) a woman come out of her own apartment, asking if she could sleep on your couch because she’d been kicked out of her own bed by some guy she’d picked up? Who is the Alpha, (a) or (b)?”
Thanks for the response. I’m still hoping you’ll respond to the first query as well. (My position is separate from Susan’s. I agree that Dread and other forms of game work — I simply don’t think they should always be the go-to tools.)
The last paragraph is self-evident, but moves the goalposts, particularly as you’re trying to reframe the question as one of dominance — for ltr/marriage if binary dominance/submission is an issue, that’s a sign of a relationship that’s in trouble — by comparison, both parties benefit WILDLY by continually “throwing dove to dove.”
Now, caveat: if I had a shit-hard uncomfortable couch, or crashing on it was somehow a punishment, then I would agree with Ted and HELL no, I’m not to punish myself because she acted poorly. But I’m an avid catnapper and crashing on the couch is no punishment.
(re: Ted notice I haven’t mentioned sex. If I want sex, I get sex. That’s a different discussion: I’m the gatekeeper and she gets sex when I want to give it to her, brutal as that sounds.)
Feminine and passive-aggressive would be withholding affection and trying to make the poor bastard guess why….a unredeeming and fairly puerile shit-test. There is in my opinion *nothing* either feminine or passive-aggressive about saying “you have fucked up royally, and if you want a return to situation-normal you had better get on the stick.”
But timing is important – Roissy advocates dread from the get go.
How can timing possibly be an issue when you say that it cannot work at all?
If you can’t see anything wrong with that from a moral POV, there’s no point in discussing it further.
A moral POV? By what moral standard do you make that claim? Is it the same one that asserts premarital sex to be moral?
I hope you are joking.
Not so much.
Any woman who didn’t throw your ass out on the spot is pathetic. I don’t deny there are some pathetic women.
That may well be. And yet, you would likely find it surprising how high the SMV of those “pathetic” women can be. You recognize that Game is powerful, I don’t think you recognize the full extent of its potential power over women. There is a reason, after all, that a certain subset of men regard all women as more or less pathetic.
I do not find it credible that many men whose wives no longer find them attractive have any options whatsoever.
I think you need to revisit your logic here. Do you really believe that a male 8 whose 9 wife no longer finds him attractive has no options whatsoever.
@Russ:
“If you’re referring to somebody who’s been turned into a “feminist victim””
Haha, I guess you mean a “”bullpost”…
@Lokland#802,
Actually, the old game saying from our grandparents’ generations is “treat a whore like a princess, and a princess like a whore.”
@742 “I don’t approach or initiate contact with men, so the selection of those men again is limited to those who approach me.”
.
Men constantly compain about approaches and rejection, but should realize what an advantage it is that, as men, we are the approachers. I am only interested in .0000001253% of the female population and cant imagine if the rest were constantly approaching me. Would make me insane. Thats why I understand the “bitch shield”. Mine would be more fierce than any I have ever encountered.
.
To those who commented about 22 year olds being more attractive because their bones have matured and so forth. The bones maturing is exactly what has made them less attractive. Many tests were done where men have to choose girls based on attractiveness. They are shown 3 pics of the same girl, only slightly manipulated to give them younger, baby like features such as a larger skull, larger forehead, smaller chin, fatter cheeks etc. Men overwhelmingly chose the girls with the baby like features. That is what made Kate Moss so desireable back in the day, even though she was far from attractive in the traditional sense. The name escapes me, maybe someone can help out. It is a syndrome where women keep their baby like features throughout their lifetimes. (Except for the skin obviously!).
@Russ in Texas
It sounds like your wife is nice and really into you and values your company. So, in your case, your removing your company from her prized nest feels like a rejection and not that she has the upper hand. So, for you it works.
However, for most men going to the couch will be seen by their less-into-them wives as a pussy move.
Thoughts?
@742 “I don’t approach or initiate contact with men, so the selection of those men again is limited to those who approach me.”
.
Men constantly compain about approaches and rejection, but should realize what an advantage it is that, as men, we are the approachers. I am only interested in .0000001253% of the female population and cant imagine if the rest were constantly approaching me. Would make me insane. Thats why I understand the “bitch shield”. Mine would be more fierce than I have ever encountered.
.
To those who commented about 22 year olds being more attractive because their bones have matured and so forth. The bones maturing is exactly what has made them less attractive. Many tests were done where men have to choose girls based on attractiveness. They are shown 3 pics of the same girl, only slightly manipulated to give them younger, baby like features such as a larger skull, larger forehead, smaller chin, fatter cheeks. Men overwhelmingly chose the girls with the baby like features. That is what made Kate Moss so desireable back in the day, even though she was far from attractive in the traditional sense. The name escapes me, maybe someone can help out. It is a syndrome where women keep their baby like features throughout their lifetimes. (Except for the skin obviously!).
@Russ
“Actually, the old game saying from our grandparents’ generations is “treat a whore like a princess, and a princess like a whore.””
My grandparents were part of the greediest, most self absorbed, self indulgent generation that displayed zero empathy or understanding of future generations (even their own children).
The only thing we can learn from them is what not to do.
note: Grandparents on moms side are going to celebrate 53-54 years.
Grandparents on fathers side would be 52 this year if they hadn’t passed away accidentally a few years back.
VD:
“I think you need to revisit your logic here. Do you really believe that a male 8 whose 9 wife no longer finds him attractive has no options whatsoever.”
Zzzzzzzz….Moron here, or the old mustached christian macho type? Can’t decide yet, although I should.
Your own kind of logic is the perfectly well articulated yet totally autistic one that leads to make me hope that you’ll never be at the head of an army at some point. Joyeux Noel.
““you have fucked up royally, and if you want a return to situation-normal you had better get on the stick.””
Stupid question.
Does stick mean penis in this scenario?
@Han
“However, for most men going to the couch will be seen by their less-into-them wives as a pussy move.
Thoughts?”
+1
If wife is still into you then yes it’ll work.
If wife is not into you, you just schlub’d out.
@OlioOx
In these shallows and miseries.
Which, taking no flood, leads to being immune;
Omitted, and cossetted by friendly flames
While outside … weeps the winds of change.
@MikeC
I see that you’re in finance, and that you know something about the investment strategies of Buffet et al. My question to you is this :
Have you ever heard of Nicolas Darvas ?
He was a ballroom dancer. He got into the stock market by sheer accident. At first he got his ass handed to him, but after a certain time he happened on a certain strategy. And his strategy was this :
Buy rising stocks with a trailing stop-loss. For those of you that don’t know what a trailing stop-loss is, it’s a bit like an old fogey with a nymphomaniac … when it’s rising, he’s staying in … but when it’s not rising, he starts running …
Darvas knew he would only be right about 50% of the time. And his stop-loss would get him out without him agonizing over it. All he did was read a Barron’s and look for stocks that were rising on unusual volume.
He started following these stocks, and if the pattern looked right, he’d do a pilot buy. If the action was still good, he’d buy some more.
All this via telegrams between him and his brokers, while he did his act across the world.
He made a fortune that way.
He was mentioned in Time Magazine. (Suzan-deary, why are all the women that reach the cover of Time Magazine so damn ugly ?)
And that was in the 1950′s
Is such a thing still possible ?
@Susan
“It’s a question of preselection, which is why I’m surprised the men here are not getting it. You can’t fake preselection. Even PUAs have to find some decent women to parade around with.”
Most women don’t get to marry a guy with preselection/options.
Most men don’t get to marry an 8.
Never having been apart of the lower categories you might not understand but they do somehow manage to carry on through generations without these things.
Boy, I knew the truth hurts, but the facts positively burn…
@SW
Or willful ignorance, which is typically PC BS or a mask for certain personal inadequacies.
It’s ironic that a lack of hostility towards women in general, on a female-oriented blog no less, is perceived as bias. Back on Planet Earth, it’s the other way around. But what can you expect from the Knights who say Ni?
Re: womanizing in Japan. It is even easier than in the U.S., if that’s possible. Even those who have not experienced the Asian circuit will probably enjoy the book “Black Passenger, Yellow Cabs.”
Marellus, re: Darvas. I know the q was addressed to Mike and I share your interest in his response, but I thought I’d jump in for a moment because I’ve been running money for about 10 years and have fairly deep familiarity with the approach that you describe.
That type of strategy is frequently employed by both global macro hedge funds and trend-following CTAs. They basically enter when prices break free of pre-determined tripwires (imagine that market prices have a heartbeat—the trading models define a “normal” heartbeat using recent historical data and then seek aberrations, or periods in which markets are starting to behave abnormally).
The programs will typically take directional positions—long or short, they don’t care—and will use a position-sizing algorithm to keep risk down to about .5%-1% of equity on each trade. This can get a bit complicated in practice, and optimal bet sizing is a discipline in itself. A fairly tight initial stop loss is determined; if a trade turns sour, it usually does so pretty quickly and the position is exited with a small loss.
A winning trade, on the other hand, can last for many months—I run a strategy like this and have been long gold futures for years. The trailing stop loss thing is not trivial and cannot be set too close; holding a winner can be likened to riding a bucking bronco and you do need to give the trade some room to breathe.
These strategies tend to enjoy conflict and crashes; they are “long volatility” and Nassim Taleb would say that they are “anti-fragile.” They don’t normally show steady 1-1.5% returns month after month; the big profits tend to come in bursts, punctuated by long periods of relative inactivity in the P&L. This can make them psychologically demanding to implement.
**(This is a heavily simplified version of a systematic trend-exploitation approach and there are many problems that have to be overcome before running one in practice, on leveraged instruments).
@Bastiat Blogger #823
My thanks to you for such an unexpected and thorough answer. I must admit that I do not know what a CTA is. Can you shed some light on this please ?
As for global maco-hedge funds doing this; is this not a case of a herd, and at that, a dangerous herd forming that might destabilize markets ?
Is there a contrarian approach to this ?
@Marellus,
It’s OT, but happy to hear. What I know about the market can be carried in a thimble. If I understood it enough to get in and make a consistent two-percent profit, I’d be a very, very happy man. As it is, I’m having to rebuild the family wealth much more slowly, over the course of decades rather than years.
@HanSolo,
You’ve surprised me butt good there. That’s a very valid point. While I have been a FWB, I’m not even remotely interested in ONS or pickups, and so wouldn’t consider myself a”natural.” If you’re right, that suggests that *I’m* an outlier.
If my wife were seriously not into me, I’d let her go and go get somebody else who was. While I couldn’t *replace* her (she is a very unusual woman and my near-perfect match), finding a new mate would not be an issue.
@YouKnowWho
“If there we no laughter, there would be no Tao.”
If your only exposure to cultural fluency is via game, then I suggest that you’d benefit considerably from broadening your horizons. The notion that c.f. is “a part of game” (rather than game relying upon competent c.f.) is risible.
@Lokland
Yes, they suck, no, it doesn’t mean penis. It’s an old piloting metaphor.
“On the flip side I can see a smokin’ hottie and go over and find out if she’s someone I want to spend time with, I have total freedom as a man. It’s really a blessing, once you learn not to attach your entire self-worth and confidence to whether or not a girl you’ve just met rejects you or not.”
Yep. EVERYbody is a waste of time for SOMEbody.
@youknowwho
“The main thing we care about is that YOU, as a man, know what YOU want. You’d be surprised how many men really don’t. When you know what you want it actually makes a lot of game easier because you start developing standards and expectations that you didn’t have when you were wishy-washy and settled for whatever the universe provided you.”
Couldn’t begin to disagree there. “Know thyself” and “Be true to thyself” are part of the fundamental building blocks of our culture. All a man needs to reject “blue pill” victim status is to develop this. Boxing, math, philosophy, hell, FRISBEE, so long as it works to give a man an understanding of who he is (upon which the latter is predicated).
Yeah, YouknowWho: I think the main issue with the “dread game” concept is that we’ve got a lot of dueling definitions floating around (bearing in mind that my argument differs from Susan’s). While that wouldn’t be the first tool in the kit I’d pick up, d.g. as you’ve expressed it certainly doesn’t seem out of bounds to me.
@YouKnowWho#830:
I know dick about Mystery (it’s a long thread, and so it would be entirely understandable if you missed my intro, but while I’ve always geeked about relationships, I’m quite new to the game scene and don’t say otherwise or pretend to knowledge I don’t have. “Ignorant” is no insult). That said, I’m not seeing anything unusual in what he’s saying; that’s relationship 101 stuff. Any man who doesn’t feel out how the girl feels about herself, her environment, all that jazz, is committing relationship death by orienting to an “image” of the girl he’s made in his mind, rather than to the ACTUAL woman in front of him.
@YouKnowwho
“But it’s incorrect to say PUAs don’t care about more than a one night stand or STR. We have entire boards dedicated to LTRs and mLTRs and oLTRs and monogamy and polygamy etc.
The main thing we care about is that YOU, as a man, know what YOU want.”
So what do you exactly want with and from a woman?
Example for my argument regarding DG (it’s a pity Vox didn’t reply to that, but it’s a big damned thread).
antidote to sexless dvd roommating:
1. go dread game and hit up a strip club with buds
2. come out well-dressed and say “come on, put on (this, your) dress; we’re going dancing.”
Both are totally legitimate tools. The first is throwing a hawk card, the second a dove card which addresses the problem head-on. VD thinks I trend hard-beta, and that’s okay – it works for me. I *suspect* it would work well for most guys as well if you’re in a salvageable relationship. (otoh, I *believe* in divorce. Breaking up was the best thing that ever happened to my hilariously-mismatched parents)
Rather, I’m saying that your phrasing suggested that CF exists inside of Game– as a game concept – rather than Game necessarily relying upon and using CF. It’s a bugs/beetle problem. Working within Game may in fact be a lovely and enjoyable means of developing some cultural fluency. But there are plenty of others equally worthwhile.
nota bene, though, if you’ve followed the thread, you’ll note that I have *never* agreed with Susan’s argument about DG, and took a very different position from the get-go when it came up. It’s a mistake to conflate my argument with hers.
Example for my argument regarding DG (it’s a pity Vox didn’t reply to that, but it’s a big damned thread).
Post the reference number here and I’ll do so.
VD thinks I trend hard-beta, and that’s okay – it works for me
I don’t have any opinion on you, merely on one specific tactic. If it works for you, great.
Zzzzzzzz….Moron here, or the old mustached christian macho type? Can’t decide yet, although I should. Your own kind of logic is the perfectly well articulated yet totally autistic one that leads to make me hope that you’ll never be at the head of an army at some point.
My own kind of logic is the Aristotelian one. But splash all the rhetoric about you like if it makes you feel better, by all means. And your army comment is indeed amusing….
Marellus,
Re: CTAs. These are “commodity trading advisors” that typically fall under CFTC regulations and exclusively trade futures contracts (vs. equities-trading hedge funds that typically fall under SEC regs). This affects registration and so on.
Most CTAs run money through individual managed accounts rather than through a pooled structure like a limited partnership, but this isn’t a hard-fast rule. So a CTA investor would normally open a trading account with a futures broker and then give the CTA manager trading authorization over the account (but the CTA would never have taken custody of the money—it would just trade the account on the named client’s behalf). Meanwhile, a hedge fund investor would normally join a limited partnership and wire money to the HF’s trading account with a prime broker, where it would be pooled with money from other limited partners.
There are pro and con elements to both structures.
Re: destabilization. Well, it really depends on the number of similar strategies hogging up a particular niche. You could probably separate most HF/CTA strategies into “short volatility” and “long volatility” categories.
A short volatility strategy will bet that prices tend to revert to a long-term moving average; they are “mean-reverting.” So let’s say that there is a sudden downwards break in the S&P. The short volatility guy might buy the market under the assumption that this is a temporary thing and that prices will soon return to some normal level. The long volatility guy will probably short the market under the assumption that this could be the start of a new bearish trend. In this example, the guys are taking opposing positions in a zero-sum game.
Normally the market will in fact bounce around noisily and thus the short-volatility guys will make regular money month after month. However, when something serious does happen, the short-vol guys will be betting against the trend, and in some cases a single really bad position can metastasize, blowing up the entire fund as the managers continually double-down and bet that the “stupid market will get back to normal” (and variations on this story have occurred many times historically—arrogant traders can become married to their positions and unable to admit that they are wrong).
The long-vol guys, in contrast, risk the death of a thousand cuts, where a market is caught in a meandering trading range and the traders keep betting on false starts for trends that never appear, losing small amounts of money each time (small losses that may add up to larger amounts over months of trendless market conditions).
Does this make sense…?
@YouKnowWho
I see that Jezebel.com had a rant against PUA’s. What struck me is that Jezebel.com knows about Mystery, and this :
The louder they protested their virtue, the faster we counted the spoons.
What I find amazing is that Jezebel.com has set its sights on the PUA community, and even more so, that when Jezebel.com fires a salvo at them, their comment threads are overwhelmed with angry men.
(Note : I say angry men. It’s hard to see if they’re PUA’s, MRA’s or just plain bullshitting.)
This did not even happen two years ago. Two years ago, I went on that site, and said something unbecoming and got roasted.
So my question to you is this : Will this increased awareness of Game not diminish its effectiveness ?
VD: 552, though I used a purely masculine example which obviously wouldn’t translate. “Throwing dove,” as I call it, would be the equivalent of sitting the guy down with a beer before deciding that it’s hopeless.
YouKnowWho: Yeah, if the dove card doesn’t work, THEN another tool like dread game seems perfectly appropriate, starting with “okay, then I should be back around 11.” (Stay out ’til 2, at a cafe with a book, if necessary)
Like I said, at NO point have I said that Dread Game is evil (unless actively run as a pre-emptive thing, which is a fight between y’all and Susan in which I have no dog) or that it doesn’t work. That’s Susan’s argument, not mine. My argument is simply that it’s one tool among many, not always the best tool for the job, and probably (given a bazillion contextual circumstances and thus an inherent ymmv) not the tool best reached for first.
“This is the equivalent of basing your opinion on politics etc. on Fox News. Do some research. ”
Link to a quality bibliography. :p
@Bastiat Blogger
Thanks again, and yes, it helped a lot. The way you describe this, there seems to be a truth in the saying that the market exists to make fools of us all … me, all I want to do, is see where the fools are going.
@Susan
“There is a reason she stopped wanting him. Fixing that is the only thing that might work, if it is not already too late.”
What if that reason were that other women were not attracted to him?
She could be but others are not. Hence she is not happy in the relationship.
You cannot have monogamy and hypergamy (preselection feeds hypergamy) without sexual attraction not existing on the women’s part. (An issue you have not yet addressed wrt the dread game issue). Its simply a matter of numbers.
As a guy, that doesn’t sound fun.
Therefore artificially or actually convincing her that preselection is occurring will cause her to be attracted or be with a woman who is with you and is not attracted.
Those are the two options created when the dichotomy of having options or not determines attractiveness or not.
Dread game + attraction, LTR – attraction or failed LTR.
Simply a matter of biology, moral considerations irrelevant.
@YKW
the thing that repeatedly surprises me about anti-gamers and jezzers is that they deny something works (fair enough – they are allowed opinions). But if you disagree they turn their rage up to ’11′.
If it doesn’t work, what is their damn problem?
There are plenty of game sources that are free, so they aren’t trying to save suckers from losing their money. So, what is their issue if ‘game does not work’?
@Just1Z
They want the true alpha cock, not the sheep in wolf’s clothing. lol
And since they can’t tell the difference between the natural wolf and the learned wolf they want to stop the sheep from learning to put on wolf’s clothing.
Also, the natural wolves don’t like the sheep in wolf’s clothing because it dillutes the market.
@Just1z
That said, only a small % of the sheep really learn to wear wolves clothing and even fewer effect such a change in their inner game that they become true wolves.
@Han
true words.
but even if one learns about game and doesn’t use it at all, it is good to understand ‘teh rulez’. men like that shirt.
I was talking to someone last night and did something purely instinctually. just after that, I thought, what a confident thing to do. I wasn’t trying to pull her (she is literally half my age), but it just felt good to make the connection, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation – the hangover that I had today from drinking till 2 am and the walk back through the deluge – not so much. I think that it helped a lot that I was truly outcome independant – I wasn’t trying to pull her. But I felt good because I believed that I understood why what I was doing improved my standing with her. Plus, she might have older single female friends…maybe I’ll claim to have improved my inner game.
p.s.
literally half my age makes her legal in any country in the world – FML
I see that you’re in finance, and that you know something about the investment strategies of Buffet et al. My question to you is this :
Have you ever heard of Nicolas Darvas ?
He was a ballroom dancer. He got into the stock market by sheer accident. At first he got his ass handed to him, but after a certain time he happened on a certain strategy. And his strategy was this :
Marellus,
Oh yeah….I am familiar with Darvas….I have that book in my library of investing/trading books.
There actually is some skepticism/doubt about whether Darvas achieved the cumulative results he achieved (not unlike the skepticism that some have over the results PUA guys or Game guys claim). Suffice it to say, I am relatively confident Darvas made the money he claimed.
His approach wasn’t anything that new. There is truth to that expression there is nothing new under the Sun. His approach was essentially the approach Jesse Livermore used to build his fortune (which he lost and rebuilt several times and finally ended up committing suicide most likely because he was married to a crazy woman).
Darvas called it Box Theory, but if you read Livermore’s original book, you’ll see it is basically the same strategy. For the few guys who might be interested, I actually have a pdf that is a scan of Livermore’s 1940 How to Trade in Stocks which is a pretty rare book. If you e-mail me, I will send it to you. If you read Philip Carret’s Art of Speculation which is from the early 20th century, you will see basically the exact same strategy outlined.
Does it still work? Read about Dan Zanger:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Zanger
Daniel J. Zanger is a technical stock analyst and equities trader. Having turned $10,775 into $18 million between June 1998 and December 1999,[1] he is the world record holder for the largest percent change for a personal portfolio for a 12-month period of time and an 18-month period of time in the history of the stock market. This success brought him coverage from Fortune, Forbes, and Stocks & Commodities Magazines.[2]
He was a contractor building pools.
I’ll point out that for me this draws the distinction between practitioners and theoreticians. In the early 20th century, you didn’t even have academics studying stock market behavior. It was only practitioners.
I find the parallels to SMP analysis striking. It is why I have such disdain for any approach that relies exclusively on academic theoretical analysis and credentialism, and always questioning the credibility of practitioners. Nicholas Darvas and Dan Zanger have no credentials or credibility outside of making a ton of money. They know a thing or two about stock price behavior without having the appropriate suffix attached after their name.
Arguably, some market environments are more conducive than others to their approach which is essentially buying a “breakout” with a stop at the “floor” of the previous range. I had accumulated a pretty good trading stake by 2010 from saving from a job and I had a really good 2010 and 2011 essentially trading aspects of that approach. 2012 has been quite bad because I happened on a bunch of failed breakouts so I got stopped out numerous times.
But the short answer to your question, is Yes I absolutely believe Darvas approach works today and will still work because I think it captures IMMUTABLE aspects of overall market psychology. Similarly, I believe many aspects of Game work because they capture IMMUTABLE aspects of female sexual psychology. It is interesting to me that the red-pill view of intersex relations essentially is what the Greeks and Romans understood thousands of years ago. Correct principles tend to stand the test of time.
@YouKnowWho@851,
Thank you for the link. Definitions are the key, since otherwise I can’t address you in the language you speak – it’s not like anything y’all have been talking about isn’t common sense, but I’m coming in from left field with different metaphors.
Respectfully, I think y’all share some of the blame for the way the thread degraded; that wasn’t all Susan. 300-some posts ago, talking about different tools for different purposes? I was the only guy in the thread talking about that.
Any one of y’all on the PU side of things could have said “yeah, I think Roissy was being over the top; straight-up, if he actually meant that, and for the record I don’t think he actually did, then that’s not Dread Game as I know and/or use it. So for purposes of argument, let’s call what I’m talking about Dread Game Golgafrincham B.”
Bang, done, differences settled on the spot.
For the record, Jezebel is a waste because it’s the bastard offspring of the Redstockings flavor of Boston Feminism, and its fundamental assumptions are hostile to all of mankind which either possesses testicles or enjoys the company of men who do.
Mike,
Interested but no idea how to email you; I’d like to get my feet wet on a very, very cautious basis,and prefer proceeding from a position of theory.
scholarsvoices@gmail.com
” It is interesting to me that the red-pill view of intersex relations essentially is what the Greeks and Romans understood thousands of years ago. Correct principles tend to stand the test of time.”
+1
Best gift you can give your little boy is a classical education.
@Marellus
“So my question to you is this : Will this increased awareness of Game not diminish its effectiveness ?”
Not really… That’s like thinking an increased awareness of makeup and spanx and pushup bras will make girls look uglier to guys. The primal brain overrides all that shit.
I think an oversaturation of PUAs will caution the younger generation of girls to be more sexually conservative and put out less. But they will still be attracted to game.
@Han
the other interesting part of talking to ‘Anna’ was during several hours of wide ranging discussion (Cockneys vs Zombies, Gun Control and Newtown etc) was that when we wandered on to ‘feminism’ as a subject (before I said much about it at all) she said quite firmly that, ‘she was NOT a feminist’ and that she, ‘just wanted to compete against the men in her field’, with no favours required, ‘thank you very much’. She is/was quite capable of doing that (in a STEM field too).
interesting to meet a self identifying non-feminist STEM…cool night. Very pretty face too…and her’s.
That type of strategy is frequently employed by both global macro hedge funds and trend-following CTAs. They basically enter when prices break free of pre-determined tripwires (imagine that market prices have a heartbeat—the trading models define a “normal” heartbeat using recent historical data and then seek aberrations, or periods in which markets are starting to behave abnormally).
Bastiat, are you one of the Turtles?
Excellent description, and I find the bet sizing to be the most difficult part. I’ve got reading about the Kelly criteria on my to do list.
@Just1Z
Glad you enjoyed the convo. You should keep having them but don’t ask the woman for phone number or anything. If she bangs you over the head with IOI, sure then go for it or if she gives you her number or shags you right there. But just keep on talking with women with no intention of asking them out.
One other point is that game, especially inner game and a non-women-hating version of the red pill is needed to counter all of the anti-male propaganda that so many men imbibe (especially the betas who in theory need it least though perhaps in practice it’s just a massive shit test to separate the alpha wheat from the beta chaff).
Remember, 80% 0f men are not attractive and therefore do not exist.
I also like to use my body to secure the 20% of men that do exist and are considered “real men.”
Frequently these “real men” treat me like shit. It’s brutal, brutal, brutal, brutal competition, and I have to accept it.
You are now telling those 20% of men how to hack my mind and in fact encouraging them to treat me like shit! And you are removing the sympathy of the 80% of the other males that I like to rely on sometimes!
The immature mind, which let’s be honest describes most women AND men in their 20s, does not see potential in people, just “unattractive, move on.” The idea that you are making more attractive men does not compute.
Instead, there are two sides to this SMP, and from the girls POV, it is already murderous out there, and you are giving the other side the power and moral justification to be even MORE murderous.
You are also eliminating their pedestal, and, let’s face it, everyone likes the pedestal.
Also, how you frame things matters a lot. If you frame things in terms of “girls have abused me, then I learned how to use them however I want, they are basically like little children, here are tricks that work!” then women aren’t going to sign on-board.
A lot of men will probably sign out, too.
@Han
it was just cool talking to her, I have no agenda beyond that. I don’ t need a number to meet her again anyway. Sometimes it’ s just nice to connect to a pretty member of the opposite sex. it’ s nice to know that despite all the shite men and women can still enjoy each other’ s company, but that’ s probably why I spend time here. I am trying to cut back on the on line hours though…they were getting out of hand!
Most CTAs run money through individual managed accounts rather than through a pooled structure like a limited partnership, but this isn’t a hard-fast rule. So a CTA investor would normally open a trading account with a futures broker and then give the CTA manager trading authorization over the account (but the CTA would never have taken custody of the money—it would just trade the account on the named client’s behalf). Meanwhile, a hedge fund investor would normally join a limited partnership and wire money to the HF’s trading account with a prime broker, where it would be pooled with money from other limited partners.
Bastiat, do many CTAs set up CPOs. I’ve got to think with the minimum size of future contracts that it is hard to standardize position size across individual contracts (going from 1 contract to 2 contracts is a pretty big increase in exposure….and yes I am a piker when it comes to future trading…my account isn’t big enough for much more than 1-2 contract positions and still having reasonable risk exposure)
However, when something serious does happen, the short-vol guys will be betting against the trend, and in some cases a single really bad position can metastasize, blowing up the entire fund as the managers continually double-down and bet that the “stupid market will get back to normal” (and variations on this story have occurred many times historically—arrogant traders can become married to their positions and unable to admit that they are wrong).
Victor Niederhoffer and John Meriweather come to mind. What is unbelievable is each has blown up more than once betting on mean reversion and still got new investors for new funds.
The long-vol guys, in contrast, risk the death of a thousand cuts, where a market is caught in a meandering trading range and the traders keep betting on false starts for trends that never appear, losing small amounts of money each time (small losses that may add up to larger amounts over months of trendless market conditions).
That is my 2012 in a nutshell. The U.S. T-bond contract has just killed me this year with false breakdowns and breakouts.
Not sure if you saw my previous question or want to keep it to yourself, but do you think the Yen is on the verge of a massive multi-year breakdown?
HanSolo, I have to run soon to dinner with the family, but here’s a post I wrote some time back on wolf, sheep and sheepdog:
http://www.rosehope.com/a-walk-of-bonding/
Thanks, Hope. I agree that there are good and evil alphas. Both have the ability to “kill” in the metaphor of the wolf and the sheepdog but their use of that power is for different ends.
Hope, I left a comment at your blog.
susan: “If you can’t see anything wrong with that from a moral POV, there’s no point in discussing it further.”
??????
Let me get this straight.
Are you saying an act or course of conduct is moral if it serves the interests of the woman or the relationship; but an act or course of conduct is immoral if it serves the interests of the man, or does not serve the interests of the woman or the relationship?
What is the basis for the “moral” judgment on what is “right” and what is “wrong”?
Interesting.
@deti
I have never said that. I have written many posts concerned with the morality and ethics of interpersonal relationships. I write frequently about the immorality of deceit, selfishness, manipulation of others for personal gain, and hypocrisy.
What I have said is that I do not concern myself with sexual morality. If two consenting adults are engaging in sexual activity and not injuring another party, that’s their business. I have no interest in entering other people’s bedrooms. Nor do I feel that virginity should be saved for marriage. I don’t even claim that promiscuity is immoral – though I do believe it is poor strategy for most people.
The ends justifies the means.
Niccolo Machiavelli
This really says it all. We’re discussing Machiavellian tactics. Other quotes by NM relevant to Game:
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
This cavalier justification for manipulating others for personal gain without regard to the injury exacted is known as the “agentic” or “exploitative” personality. Such individuals are not fit for long-term relationships, and rarely seek them. This is not a personal opinion – the field of study on the Machiavellian personality is very deep and rich.
I cannot control what men do.
“O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily
do, not knowing what they do!”
Claudio, Much Ado About Nothing
What I can do is warn women about men who employ Machiavellian tactics. They make very, very poor relationship prospects.
@Bastiat Blogger
I’ll cop to directly recommending beta guys as relationship partners. I didn’t pull that out of a hat. There is ample evidence that hypermasculine/high T males cheat more and divorce more. I have suggested that women should avoid very high N males, and I have defined the limit (admittedly somewhat arbitrarily) at around 40. I do believe that men who have a very high number of partners are men who spend considerable time and energy chasing tail, which I do not consider a noble life purpose. I also believe their demonstrated preference for sexual variety implies poor suitability for monogamy.
I cannot recall promoting STEM males, nerdy males, virgin males, etc. Not only did I not suggest finding guys who are disgusted by hookup culture, I incurred the wrath of several male commenters here last week when I stated that I would be wary of a man who was “extremely disgusted by casual sex.” I have also stated that I have no regrets about the casual sex I have had, nor do I resent the casual sex my husband had before we were married.
I definitely have a lot of Explorer in me! I don’t think I’m really in the closet – I generally laugh off all of the ‘spherians’ branding of me as a slut who married a beta provider. I’ve also defended what I perceive as harmless fun in the Bridesmaid/Groomsman fling, for example. I don’t think my SOI score would make any sense after being married for so long, but I suspect that in my youth I would have been in the middle, at least. I’ve stated this on the blog as well.
It is interesting though – I have been able to maintain a thriving monogamous relationship with mutual sustained attraction for a very long time, so there must be a bit of another Fisherian type in there as well.
I’m a big fan of catching these guys in their late 20s and up. My posts and comments about dating older tie into this. I think that a lot of these “STR beasts” will in fact want to be husbands and fathers, but not yet. (St. Augustine). As long as they didn’t go full blown PUA or get jaded and cynical about women, they’re potentially high value mates. What’s changed since my youth is that women today must filter much more aggressively. You think that equity trader is cute? Go for it, but be ready to kick him to the curb after the first douche move.
They do indeed, but that is only a couple of dozen women. When I do share real tidbits from those sessions, the guys have fits. A woman whose count is 40! Someone said “boyfriends are ugly!” The Atlantic quoted one as referring to a dick the size of her pinky. Stupid, selfish sluts!
In private, I have answered a vast array of questions in a manner that might surprise you. One of my focus groups alums works for Creative Artists Agency in LA and was recently asked out by a bonafide movie star. She was beside herself and asked me what she should do. My advice was “Go for it, but realize that you are visiting a foreign land. You will not live there. Make the most of your holiday.” Now, I know that such advice is likely to send Escoffier into paroxysms of indignation. And sometimes I really would just rather not get into it on the threads – it’s draining and ridiculously time consuming. In fact, I’m an idiot for writing this on Dec. 22. I think I’ll disappear shortly.
In the United States, if you are growing your own food on your own land for your own consumption, you are engaging in activity that materially affects interstate commerce and can be regulated by the federal government.
There is no such thing as a private action, everything hits the marketplace eventually and eventually someone has to deal with shit. It’s sort of like shooting a rocket into space, it’s eventually going to hit SOMETHING.
@Deti
OK, let’s clear up the semantics. You and I are on the same page.
I hope you recall that I strongly supported your actions in that matter, and I still do. I do not consider that Instilling Dread, as outlined in Roissy’s Dread post. You responded to being disrespected and insulted by your wife in a manner which is fair, honest, and free of manipulative tactics. You stood up for yourself, making clear under which conditions you would leave, and what it would take for you to stay. This is what Mr. HUS did, and in a much smaller way, Stephen in the OP did this as well.
Creating dread is something very different, as it depends on a prolonged state of anxiety and uncertainty. “Will he leave? Why is he flirting with other women in front of me? Why does my husband humiliate me this way?” If anyone instilled Dread, Mrs. deti did!
Dread: Anticipate with great apprehension or fear
Mrs. Deti knows that she need not fear if she gets her act together. She has a roadmap to continued and even improved marital relations, and she knows you prefer not to divorce. Presumably, she has enough trust in your character to believe that if she makes the effort you require of her, you will not leave. She needn’t feel apprehensive or fearful, and you didn’t seek to make her feel that way. Your intent was to assert yourself and your needs in a straightforward manner. That could not be less manipulative.
Intent always matters. Always. Our justice system, and in fact all societal institutions recognize this. There is a world of difference between harming someone intentionally and accidentally. Civilization depends on it.
@Lokland
Cosign.
Okay, you cosign that.
What is “P&D” material in this context? Your groomsman and bridesmaid scenario sounds pretty much like a P&D to me, and you consider this “in the middle” of women’s sexual behavior.
To relatively restricted guys, even “average” looks like “whore.”
So Cooper can run Dread Game on all girls he wants, right?
@VD
Timing is an issue in the debate, not in the deployment of a tactic I don’t endorse.
I am asking you point blank whether you believe it is acceptable to prophylactically induce anxiety, fear, and jealousy, creating a sense of “impending doom” in a passionate relationship that is going very well? I assume your answer is no, as you have not done this in your own marriage.
There is a gulf between Instilling Dread as insurance against future waning of attraction and doing it to jump start a troubled marriage. I am asking you to qualify whether you endorse both of these strategies.
I think there are very few male 8s married to discontented 9s. The question is merely theoretical. However, the real question is why is his wife turned off by him? He was obviously a catch when she married him – he needs to get that back. If he does have options, of the Real Housewives variety, his wife may indeed feel dread when he starts tomcatting around at neighborhood barbecues. But whatever turned her off is still not fixed. He may be able to fuck his wife silly after the barbecue, but the next day, she is going to hate, hate, hate that thing he does when he chews with his mouth open.
First of all, whoever is pissed is the one to deny the pleasure or comfort of sleeping together. It’s much harder to kick someone out of the bedroom – I would never, ever agree to that. My husband has on occasion said, “I have no interest in sharing your bed.” and gone off to the guest room. I felt lonely and deserted in our big bed by myself. And I was afraid to look him in the eye in the morning.
Removing yourself from someone’s company is a rejection and feels terrible to that person. It doesn’t matter where you sleep – though I can understand why going to sleep somewhere uncomfortably is a weak move. Anyway, I’ve experienced it as a punishment.
Again, for the record, it was not Dread.
I see that Jezebel.com had a rant against PUA’s. What struck me is that Jezebel.com knows about Mystery, and this :
I went over and checked out that article. Behold the masterful wordsmithing in the introductory paragraph:
“Here at this site, we spend a lot of time railing against the shitty shit that dudes do, because, come on, shitty shit is shitty.
Now how can you argue with such a display of verbal eloquence and logic. Seriously, one wouldn’t be at fault to think a pre-teen or kindergartner wrote that sentence.
And here is the key philosophical divide:
Or, rather, there kind of is. Attraction is way more like magic than science. It’s intangible and surprising and there is no formula.
The truth is no, you are not a special little unique snowflake, and the same stuff works to attract a good percentage of the female population. Any guy who takes any of that tripe to heart sort of deserves the lack of success he is most likely experiencing
I see this behavior most often in academics and those whose lives are structured in such a way that they experience no consequences for being wrong. It’s pretty much impossible to have that attitude in finance or economics; it’s only a matter of time before you’re wrong and there will definitely be consequences.
Yeah but if you are in the top 10% of intelligence of any given environment regardless you are going to spent so much time being right that being wrong can become hard to experience or even spot.
So my question to you is this : Will this increased awareness of Game not diminish its effectiveness ?
The theory is that even if more women are aware of Game that won’t make then less attractive look at Athol and his wife as other’s bloggers whose female SO are aware it seems to not really matter unless the woman has a personal vendetta against it.
Jezebel is telling me to read a Cosmo online poll for definitive instructions on how to create my dating life.
I don’t think I need to say anything more than that.
…. To make a long thread short don’t bother trying to date unless you have options….the whole fake vs real alpha comments have been quite enlightening…
You can just see the oozing nonsense out of this article. Women don’t want to be treated like crap, they don’t want to be hit on by creeps, they DEFINITELY don’t want to be told they are not special snowflakes and that they are in fact humans with predictable reactions.
All of the typical reasons she is anti-game…all coming from…
A raging sense of insecurity.
Oh, but here is their one game advice:
“6. They’re just going to spend your money on 5 Hour Energy.
For fuck’s sake, give it to the ASPCA or something. 100% guaranteed panty-dropper right there”
There you go men. Just donate to ASPCA and you will have sex with all women you want, ever. 100% guaranteed from an insecure girl on the internet.
Sue: “When I do share real tidbits from those sessions, the guys have fits. A woman whose count is 40! Someone said “boyfriends are ugly!” The Atlantic quoted one as referring to a dick the size of her pinky. Stupid, selfish sluts!”
Fits? No, this is very good and useful information! It means we men have justification for being as nasty.
Had I known stuff like this at 18, I would have acted less polite, and more like these woman act. I would have laughed off any women or elders who may have tried to scold or judge my nascent behavior like these women, because I would have known the women were the same, or worse. I would have not bothered to expend the effort to be kinder to women than they were to me.
Instead, I would have gladly been as unapologetically crass as these women with no remorse.
@ Emily
Well those are geeks (on both side of the equation), not nerds. I’m only somewhat of a geek, but I’m an uber-nerd, so I can’t really comment on the gender ratios re: geeks.
There are always options. A person can always walk away and maintain his/her self-respect. Being single is preferable to being in a bad situation. That’s why even though my husband was single and not plate spinning, he never once struck me as “without options.”
So anyone can do it, regardless of whether or not that person has another in the pipeline or can even attract another partner. I would much rather be alone than put up with a negative energy vampire.
But there are also lots of people who would much rather think they have the “prize” and put up with anything, including abuse. I’ve had to learn my own lessons about this.
Em: “I was recently at an anime convention and I couldn’t help but notice that there were way more girls than guys. I remember thinking that they should merge the event with Comic Con. :p. IMO, it’s more a logistical issue than anything.”
It’s a bad idea, thats why. For one, sexual zoning. Then, the women would think the men are creeps.
Somehow I increasingly do not give a damn about this “threat”
Had I known stuff like this at 18, I would have acted less polite, and more like these woman act.
Doesn’t that run the risk of alienating any decent women you might happen to meet?
I’ve told the story here about meeting my husband at a b’day party for a friend of a friend in a bar. In that same bar, possibly on the same night, some guy came up to me a delivered a nuclear neg to me. In reading in the ‘sphere it’s become clear to me that his objective was to pick me up, but my reactions wasn’t tingles, it was WTF?!
Creepy = incongruence of intention and action. A guy who wants to screw a girl’s brains out but acts all nice and totally non-sexual often comes across as creepy. On a tamer scale, a waitress who does friendly chatter but is thinking she’d rather do something else can come across a little creepy. On a worse scale, a person who intends to kill but acts all pleasant is massively creepy.
So a guy going to anime convention because he genuinely likes anime isn’t seen as creepy, but a guy going because he is only there for the girls comes across a bit “off” because the internal and external don’t match up. Most people don’t fully understand this mismatch but can still detect it on some level, so they label it “creepy.” If a guy’s internal and external states are in sync, he is no longer creepy but “confident.” He goes to the anime convention and is shameless about his purpose, to hit on the girls.
That is why people often talk about “inner game.” It’s actually the whole game.
Along this same vein, there’s more to a “neg” than just a backhanded compliment or to knock the girl down a few pegs. A guy who truly doesn’t give a damn will be authentic, honest and will not be afraid to offend — which ends up the same as a “neg.”
It’s the way of the natural who pulls off the “neg” because he didn’t mean it to offend, just saying what’s on his mind, and possibly what’s on other people’s minds as well, but those other guys are too scared to say it out loud. The natural is also witty and charming, so he also probably phrased it or delivered it in such a way that people don’t take it quite as badly. Or, at least, can’t react to it with actual anger and indignation.
When Mrs. deti told me she wasn’t attracted to me and had been treating me with disrespect that day, I knew I had to do something, because “I love you but I’m not in love with you” was just around the corner. Visions of a process server dropping divorce petitions at my feet in my office, sliding down the razor-lined divorce slide and being forcibly divested of my life’s work danced in my head.
Deti, I don’t believe that anyone should supplicate themselves to maintain a marriage, so I understand your putting your foot down. What I don’t understand it is whether or not this woman who said that she never was attracted to you ever became attracted to you or if you two love each other.
@deti
First, standards of morality apply equally to all human beings, regardless of sex. All the great religions lay out principles of right and wrong. I feel extremely confident in saying that Machiavellian tactics are directly opposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Personally, I feel that any tactic or behavior designed to benefit oneself at the direct expense of someone else must be unethical. That is the zero sum game – the gender wars in this case. I advocate a standard that ignores gender politics in favor of one-on-one human interaction without regard to who maintains control or “the upper hand.”
Giving from a mentality of abundance and self-respect trumps taking 100% of the time. What you give you get back in spades. At a very minimum, we should all be held to a standard of “do no harm.” Instill Dread violates that rule of basic human decency, IMO.
BTW, this applies to women just as much – we are guilty of plenty of Machiavellian tactics as well.
@Marc
The word you’re looking for is neoteny. It refers to the retention of childlike characteristics in adults, like puppyish yipping in dogs or big eyes and small chins in adult women, not childlike characteristics in children. There’s a different word for the attraction to childlike characteristics in children or adolescents.
Rollo highjacked the thread fairly early by suggesting that Stephen in the OP might be a PUA. That brought out the rather ridiculous Yareallypua and it became all about pickup tactics and dread game, with every one of its advocates either dodging questions, qualifying their positions, or attempting various degrees of rhetorical gymnastics to justify Roissy’s demented and rather ridiculous post.
Can you provide the Greek and Roman views of intersex relations? IIRC, Greeks thought that sodomy between older men and young men was the highest and most noble form of sexual expression. And the Romans got pretty crazy with orgies, incest, etc. I’m curious to know more about their “wisdom.”
@OTC
I believe you are one of the commenters who has taken particular exception to quotes from my focus group members.
I’m glad you realized that it is not good strategy to be giving to people who are not interested in you or have no intention of reciprocating.
Removing yourself from someone’s company is a rejection and feels terrible to that person. It doesn’t matter where you sleep – though I can understand why going to sleep somewhere uncomfortably is a weak move. Anyway, I’ve experienced it as a punishment.
One day hubby decided to take a nap in the guest room who is its project room too and he overslept I woke up around 4 am in the morning and not finding my husband in bed, gave me a horrible feeling of abandonment and dread and it was obviously not something born out of misconduct , I can’t imagine even falling sleep if he would had go because I did something to him. A woman that doesn’t care about her husband not sharing their bed for a real reason is a woman long gone to the other side IMO. I don’t disagree with dread after everything else has failed, but as preventive measure is bound to get tiresome and loss effectiveness after a while, people are not designed to be on a state of constant fear they will solve the situation whether by disconnecting or removing themselves, just my two cents.
I am asking you point blank whether you believe it is acceptable to prophylactically induce anxiety, fear, and jealousy, creating a sense of “impending doom” in a passionate relationship that is going very well?
Since you’re phrasing this as a moral question, the various caveats are irrelevant. What it boils down to is this: “is it acceptable to induce anxiety, fear, and jealousy in another”. By the moral standard to which I adhere, one is to fear God only. So, no, it is not acceptable, because one is attempting to usurp God’s place.
But this is a very different question from the one we have been discussing, which is whether Dread works. And I do believe that prophylactically inducing anxiety, fear, and jealousy, and creating a sense of “impending doom” in a passionate relationship that is going very well can stabilize and strengthen a relationship because people are fallen, passions are ephemeral, and women in particular tend to be ruled by fear.
Fear is the most reliable means of manipulating women. The best politicians do it all the time; look at how the fear of the statistically improbable is being used to fuel the latest push for gun control. If you look at the sex of the four percent of Americans who have changed their position on the issue post-Newton, you can be sure that at least 3/4 will be women. Since women break up most marriages and since fear is a proven means of successfully manipulating female behavior, it should be readily apparent that instilling anxiety, fear, and jealousy in women can be an effective means of not leaving the relationship to the whims of female passions.
I don’t use Dread because I have a very high level of natural indifference to everything non-abstract. In Athol’s terminology, I have to add Beta to maintain my marriage; I don’t need more Alpha. I do not seek to instill fear or anxiety in my wife, but to allay it. But that isn’t the case for most men, and in a fallen world where women are permitted to voluntarily divorce their husbands without cause, there is an unfortunate justification for immoral tactics such as Dread.
Oh we should all aspire to politician levels of machiavellianism. /sarcasm
This is the antidote:
http://therawness.com/on-awareness/
Re : Machiavelli
“Giving from a mentality of abundance and self-respect trumps taking 100% of the time. What you give you get back in spades. At a very minimum, we should all be held to a standard of “do no harm.””
Great idea.
Until your the one who has had many things taken from you.
As a general rule, unless the person has a reason too, they will not give anything back to you.
Return in spades is a pipe dream.
@VD
Perhaps this explains at least partly why we have been speaking past one another. I am interested in the ethical question of whether it is acceptable to use Machiavellian tactics on a fellow human being for personal gain. At least 80% of my commentary on Dread addresses this point.
I also have real questions about the efficacy of Dread over the longer term. I do not doubt at all that it may work in the short term. I daresay Roissy’s prescription would have a woman in love nearly insane with worry. That level of insecurity may indeed produce behavior very pleasing to the male as she goes all out to try to keep him in her “paranoid tizzy.”
I am unable to conjure a mental image of a marriage ruled primarily by fear for decades. Earlier I likened it to Scheherazade. It strikes me as an inherently unstable state for the female, and would likely produce behavior over time seen in former hostages or POWs.
I don’t believe love can survive the use of fear as a tactic.
In summary, does Dread work to make your wife feel anxious and insecure? Yes, but those feelings are malignant, at least in her, and she cannot remain suspended in that state of being eager to please for long. In my own observations of women in that state, anger and resentment were a more likely expression of emotion than increased ardor.
As an aside, I would also stipulate that creating the appearance of options when there are none will fail. If a man whose wife has lost attraction wants to recapture her desire for him, he must address the root cause of the problem. I do not believe most men are capable of the Dread strategy, nor would they welcome the result. I believe we are talking about a method utilized by an infinitesimal portion of the population – this discussion is entirely theoretical.
Pump and Dump implies the woman would like to see the man again or perhaps even be in a relationship with him. You can’t get dumped if you don’t give a sh*t.
The wedding party scenario, which I believe is fairly common, is one where two people have a fling, often away from home, knowing it can only last a couple of days at most. Expectations are clear, objectives are in alignment, and no one is injured in the process.
Then they’d better avoid women of average SOI. To relatively unrestricted women, “relatively restricted” in a male looks like “abnormally low sex drive.” It’s important, IMO, to partner with someone whose views on sexuality are similar to one’s own.
Hope, while I agree, there is that is logical, rational version of creepy is only used by people like you. Most of the time when the word creepy is used openly, it means “someone unattractive dared to talk to me, and now I’m going to creep-shame publicly them so everyone knows that this is unacceptable”, congruent or not.
J: “Doesn’t that run the risk of alienating any decent women you might happen to meet?”
Of course not, you don’t say it to their face, but save it for private discussion. I’m sure Susan’s focus group women don’t say this to men directly.
@Marellus #887
Sounds like a guy who knew his shit.
That is not the way to popularity – everyone knows that. That’s why politicians gave that truth-crack up decades ago.
He might have a better rep if he’d thrown in a few smileys and lols whilst telling uncomfortable truths…just putting that idea out there.
In the only Borgia series featuring Ol’ Mac, he isn’t stand out evil by the standards of the times. Not looking to beatify the guy, but hell the Pope wasn’t very holy, was he?
Both modern series are cool BTW, they are both worth a look as they tell the stories differently. After all your hussy harping on about GOT characters that I don’t know or care about. I’m giving a male Shout out to the two gorgeous Lucrezias.
Borgia – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1736341/ (Isolda Dychauk)
The Borgias – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1582457/ (Holliday Grainger)
Yankie John Doman makes the more physically impressive Borgia Bull in the euro version (imho), Limey Jeremy Irons has the brains, but not the physical presence in the US version (imho).
iirc uk netflix had the euro version online (though it might have been lovefilm). got viewing of interesting times.
@Hope
As always, Ricky Raw nails it on these kinds of questions.
It occurs to me that we all know that Dark Triad personalities succeed. They employ a short-term mating strategy that has survived. They tend to attract people with specific personality traits.
In a very real way, we’re discussing whether narcissists who lack empathy and are willing to manipulate others can be successful. We know that the answer is a resounding yes, with certain types of people. No doubt, they select those types as partners from the start, so Dread may work for them in creating an extreme version of the dynamic already present in the relationship.
This is why the most important thing you can do is filter “takers” out of your life and refuse to have anything to do with them. It’s true in mating, friendships, even business.
The raw material is the most important ingredient. If you choose the wrong person, you will be abused. An extreme example is loving someone who does not experience empathy. You will get nothing back from a person incapable of love or giving, obvs.
In my experience, women use this word to describe the way a man makes them feel. This is achieved via a specific set of behaviors rather than looks. An inability to read social cues, or even facial expressions, inappropriate levels of intense eye contact without speaking, and a tendency to violate the boundaries of personal space are all actions that have led me to call a man creepy. Social anxiety also makes other people uncomfortable.
I understand that men who exhibit these traits are often not able to control them or change them. This is unfortunate, but you can’t shame women into viewing them differently when they are experiencing a physiological response of mild alarm or revulsion.
@Susan
“An inability to read social cues, or even facial expressions, inappropriate levels of intense eye contact without speaking, and a tendency to violate the boundaries of personal space are all actions that have led me to call a man creepy.”
I was standing in line behind a group of women (tall ppls) to get onto a patio bar.
I was texting on my phone when one decided to scream that there was a creepy guy behind her.
They were neither my type nor particularly attractive. I honestly hadn’t really payed them any attention before then.
I know quite a few women who use the creepy label to elevate themselves. Similar to the fat chick who rejects all men approaching her group in an attempt to appear selective.
Remember that Macchiavelli was a Republican who despised the man he was describing. The Prince is a vicious six-letter word rhyming with “flat tire.”
Anyways, on the Romans, and relevant if one adjusts the context:
Epictetus, from the Discourses
Next to this, if you are a senator of any state, remember that you are a senator: if a youth, that you are a youth: if an old man, that you are an old man; for each of such names, if it comes to be examined, marks out the proper duties. But if you go and blame your brother, I say to you, You have forgotten who you are and what is your name. In the next place, if you were a smith and made a wrong use of the hammer, you would have forgotten the smith; and if you have forgotten the brother and instead of a brother have become an enemy, would you appear not to have changed one thing for another in that case? And if instead of a man, who is a tame animal and social, you are become a mischievous wild beast, treacherous, and biting, have you lost nothing? But, (I suppose) you must lose a bit of money that you may suffer damage? And does the loss of nothing else do a man damage? If you had lost the art of grammar or music, would you think the loss of it a damage? and if you shall lose modesty, moderation (καταστολήν) and gentleness, do you think the loss nothing? And yet the things first mentioned are lost by some cause external and independent of the will, and the second by our own fault; and as to the first neither to have them nor to lose them is shameful; but as to the second, not to have them and to lose them is shameful and matter of reproach and a misfortune. What does the pathic lose? He loses the (character of) man. What does he lose who makes the pathic what he is? Many other things; and he also loses the man no less than the other. What does he lose who commits adultery? He loses the (character of the) modest, the temperate, the decent, the citizen, the neighbour. What does he lose who is angry? Something else. What does the coward lose? Something else. No man is bad without suffering some loss and damage. If then you look for the damage in the loss of money only, all these men receive no harm or damage; it may be, they have even profit and gain, when they acquire a bit of money by any of these deeds.
@ Susan Walsh
Whenever I’ve thought that a man was creepy, it was definitely due to the reasons you have described above. I’m nice enough to not call a man creepy to his face though. I can’t imagine what would happen if I ever did.
Obviously, the only thing to do is ignore such people. The world is full of idiots and assholes. I’m sure it’s no consolation, but a young woman I know was recently turned away from a frat party at the door because “no lardasses allowed.” She is overweight, but not obese – just chubby.
It’s natural to feel shame when being singled out, even by worthless scum, but it’s important to develop a thick skin. I know you’ve done that.
@Russ in Texas
A few years ago I developed a massive crush on the Stoics and read a lot of them. I adore Epictetus. Thank you for injecting that very important passage.
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