When I was writing Breadcrumbs this week, I was attempting to focus on one aspect of an overall whole of applicable Game that I assumed most readers of this blog would already have some grasp of. I regret that I’m sometimes hasty in these assumptions; there are plenty of freshly unplugged Men who are looking for practical information on Game who’re completely unfamiliar with the techniques and associated principles that support them. It’s a shame to me to think that a guy’s first experience with Game should come from, to put it gently, a more juvenile mindset. It’s no wonder most men spit the red pill out after being told ham-handedly to “just neg the target bro.” It’s difficult enough for most men to come to terms with their fem-centric psychological conditioning, but doubts about the legitimacy of a still evolving Game, courtesy of adolescents, is often enough to drive a man back into his mental cocoon.

What I was alluding to in Breadcrumbs was an element in the overall flow of a date. I use the term “date” here in its loosest meaning; no one really “dates” anymore, but there is a progression in engaging a woman you have an interest in, whether you’re on date number three of an LTR or you’re working towards a same night lay.

The Process

As odd as this will sound there is a natural “flow” to a date that escalates to intimacy. Much of what the mPUAs teach is really emulation of behaviors that follow this flow. Damn near every PUA technique (tools in the toolbox) is a behavior most men in the seminars have never figured out on their own either by way of fear of rejection, or simply no opportunity. Kino, C&F (cocky & funny), peacocking, open-ended questions, conversational skills, isolation, escalation, etc. are all part of this flow. When a guy gets stuck at a particular stage in this flow the date breaks down, interest levels waiver. This may be him, it may be her, often a combination of both, but the flow stalls out and intimacy is not arrived at.

For a guy used to rejection (and at some point this is ALL guys) and sexual deprivation, the natural impulse is to blather out as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time for fear that he wont get another stab at the only girl in recent memory who accepted his approach. He disrupts the flow and ceases to intrigue the woman. As counterintuitive as this seems (and contrary to the popular belief that women want full disclosure and complete honesty) women want to read a Man chapter by chapter, each chapter being a new reward for her interest.

Nothing is more self-satisfying for a woman than for her to think she has pieced together who you are using her (imagined) feminine intuition.

But the AFC rattles off his life-story book summation from the back cover and feeds her the cliff notes all in the course of a 2 hour date, vomiting it out all over the restaurant table and mistakenly believes it’s just a necessary step to intimacy and familiarity. He loses the initiative, his sense of mystery, his challenge and his attention is too easily given – and is therefore worthless because she didn’t have to earn it. In his rush to get past the uncomfortable stages of clumsily developing rapport, he denies her the satisfaction of having to ‘figure him out’.

Embracing the Flow

The guy who successfully escalates is the Man who’s conscious of this flow and isn’t afraid to sometimes pause it, be deliberately ambiguous, or halt it altogether in order to leave her wanting more – then restarting it, should it hang. The Man who’s got options isn’t afraid of keeping his own mystery and challenge about him, and women covertly pick up on this nuance. The guy who does this communicates confidence subconsciously in that she picks up on the fact that his attention (and personal information) is a reward for her interest. This is the ‘breadcrumb’ ideal that maintains flow. Give her just enough tidbits, breadcrumbs, about yourself to pick up the next one and lead her where you (and she) want her to be.

Be Her Drug Dealer

I should note at this point that there is a certain bio-chemical aspect for women experiencing intrigue. However, by this definition, a person can develop a ‘tolerance’ to the endorphin cocktail if exposed to it often enough. When engaging a woman, probably the last thing on a Man’s mind is the hormonal responses being triggered for her while the ‘date’ progresses. The easiest illustration of this is the “action date” theory; do something exciting with your target in order for her to associate that feeling with you. On the front end, she’s jet skiing with you in South Beach, but on the backend her body is producing adrenaline and dopamine in excitement. The ideal state is very Pavlovian; you want the very mental image of you to produce the same effect in her body chemistry.

That’s all fine, but maintaining that rush doesn’t need to come exclusively from bungee jumping or sky diving. Those same chemical triggers can be stimulated with indignation, jealousy, lust, intrigue, suspicion, imagination, etc., basically all the food her internal hamster needs to spin the wheel. Far too many men underestimate a woman’s nuanced sensitivity to the prompts that trigger this biological response.

Using this information, it would seem that the right idea would be to do the intuitive thing and perpetuate the good feeling rush of the date by rattling off as much detail about yourself in the shortest amount of time to get to intimacy. It seems to make sense since every guy’s been told the way into a woman’s pants is to make her feel comfortable with him, to be her friend, be sensitive, listen to her, etc. So he can’t appreciate the necessary anxiety that comes from sexual tension in attraction. The attraction phase is uncomfortable, and the natural, predictable response is to avoid the discomfort. So while she may be high on endorphins at the time, his rationale is still deductive – how does he get from point A to point B to point C?

He desexualizes, he sells the farm, he makes himself an open book and essentially kills the impetus and breaks the flow.

“Your bulletproof Game and charming personality wont make you look any better when your shirt comes off.”

Looks.

Assets.

Game.

Have two. Three is best, but if you only have one, Game is the most essential.

I realize that I’m heading into dangerous territory with this, but I maintain that looks are an integral part of attraction – sorry, that’s a fact of life – but I’ve never stated that looks cancel Game. In fact I advocate that learning Game is just as necessary as maintaining a good physique.

The problem is with people who can only think in absolutes. It’s always an either-or proposition; Game trumps physique or physique trumps game is horse shit. They’re both important and play off each other. There are plenty of average looking guys who pull tail thanks to Game in spite of their looks, and there are also good-looking guys who pull tail without ever hearing what Game is. But wouldn’t you rather be the guy with both? The guy who can pull women without compensating for personal deficits?

Consider that greater than 66% of people in western society are overweight (33% are morbidly obese). So it stands to reason that 2/3rd of the guys seeking out the community in order to change their lives, outlook and sexual prospects are going to be struggling with obesity from the outset. Now also consider the preferred belief among guys that looks, at least, matter less than personality, Game, etc. in female attraction. This is NOT a coincidence. For these guys it takes more effort to change their bodies than to change their minds.

“Looks aren’t as important for women“

The first thing most men who were previously out of shape will tell you is the marked increase in attention they receive from women after they got in shape. This is perhaps the simplest experiment that puts the lie to this assertion.*

There is a popular misconception men adopt in thinking that “looks aren’t as important for women” and that they’re more forgiving of a few extra pounds if a guy is witty, humorous and/or embodies some combination of the laundry list of nonsensical adjectives they place on their online dating profiles. This is the male version of the body image acceptance social convention women have been promoting themselves for the past 50 years. Don’t worry about getting in shape; money, humor and confidence will make any woman swoon for you. If this were the case the Louie Andersons and Danny Devitos of the world would be swimming in top-shelf poon. I have no doubt that very rich, but out of shape men have a relatively easy time attracting women, but they can’t make a woman genuinely desire to fuck him on a physical level. It’s just the very commercial version of negotiating desire.

While this may seem like a male-specific social convention, guess again; it’s actually a very calculated feminine convention. In terms of feminine breeding strategies and women’s schedules of mating, it is far more advantageous for a woman to engage in short-term breeding strategies with Alpha men during the peak of her sexual viability when she knows there is a social structure ready to accommodate her long-term breeding strategy (i.e. provisioning) with future men. In other words, encourage men to think that “looks aren’t as important to women” so they’ll be more acceptable future providers while breeding in the short-term with men embodying their very specific physical ideal. This is precisely the reason why the “kidult / man-up” phenomenon is so vexing for women today – it threatens this long-term strategy.

Priorities

In accordance with women’s sexual strategies, women place an importance upon looks according to their phase of life. The priorities and importance of characteristics that women will consider prerequisites for intimacy shift as her life’s conditions dictate.

14 – 24 years old: Looks are EVERYTHING. Yes, some romanticism might help complete the fantasy, and Game is definitely a factor, but the priority for arousal is primarily Darwinian. Women will gladly overlook character flaws or a lack of assets in favor of fucking the physical Alpha while she approaches her own sexual apex. For a brilliant study of this take the time to read Dr. Martie Hasselton’s study, Why Muscularity is Sexy.

25-30 years old: Looks are still of primary importance, but other factors are beginning to compete in significance as she becomes increasingly more aware of hitting the impending Wall. While she’s still hot enough to command attention, her hypergamic priorities lean more towards the life time provisioning potential and parental investment potential a Man represents. As she gets closer to 30, she knows she has to play her cards well if she is to cash out of the game while she’s still able to compete with other women. Ambition, character, assets, humor, personality, etc. begin to be more important in the light of a potential lifetime commitment.

30-35 years old: Most single women in this demographic are in varying degrees of denial (aided by social conventions), but on some level of consciousness they realize that they’re past their expiration date and securing a commitment is a progressively more difficult battle with every passing year. Looks lose precedent in favor of assets and status. Game and personality become more prominent, but the primary focus is catching up to the choices she made (or should’ve made) when she was about 28. Locking down a proven commodity – a Man with a reasonable amount of success and status – is the goal now; not a Man with “potential” for that same success. While the physical is still important, she’s more than willing to compromise the physical standards she held at 24 if the Man brings a lot to the table.

35-45 years old: She’s well past her expiration date, hit the Wall and is, graciously or not, accepting the fact that she’s used goods. Any notion of a list of requisites or priorities are a fond memory now. She may play the Cougar card in an ego protection effort. This may seem like she’s back to her primary Looks focus in playing the Cougar, but again, on some level of consciousness she understands that younger Men are doing her the favor by fucking her and in no way expects more than a physical fling. The hope is still, by some miracle, to lock down an aging AFC divorcee in a bad spot, with at least some amount of appreciable assets. Status is nice, looks would be icing on the cake if he’s still got them, but provisioning takes priority above even Game or social intelligence.

Making the Change

Changing yourself takes an effort. The greatest obstacle in change is the first one; recognizing and accepting that you need to change. This is where AFCs and beta males chomp at the bit because they’ve been told for the better part of a lifetime to “just be themselves” and everything will go according to fate’s plan. Then for whatever reason they unplug from the Matrix enough to realize that they’ve been sold a bill of goods and that personal change is necessary for them. They need to change their lifestyle, change their attitudes, change their outlook, change their minds about themselves and yes, change their physiques too.

But change takes effort and people are lazy. They want the quick fix; the magic pill that makes them happy, successful and sexually irresistible. So they flock to guys selling the best program that promises all that for a minimum of effort. Learning Game demands practiced effort, but it requires FAR less physical effort than improving one’s body, and it’s especially daunting for guys unaccustomed to working out. It takes time, energy and dedication all commensurate with how out shape that guy is to begin with.

From Women’s Physical Standards:

There are countless “chubby chaser” websites dedicated to catering to this particular “fetish” for men, but not a single one exists for women, why?. By that I mean there is a percentage in society of otherwise average, fit men seeking out obese women, yet the standard for ideal masculinity seems to remain constant for females by the lack of “fetishes” for obese males. There is such a demand in society by men seeking fat women that businesses have been developed in order meet it, but there is no similar demand on the part of fit women (or one not sufficient enough to register) seeking overweight men. Why do you suppose this is? There has never been a “rubenesque” period for Men – where overweight men were consider the feminine ideal – in history. A muscular athletic build has ALWAYS been the masculine standard.

As I stated in Sexy, men define what is feminine and sexy for women, however the inverse is true in that women define what is masculine and sexy for men. The reason women find particular aspects of Men’s physiology sexually arousing is because the men in the past who embodied them were rewarded with sex often enough to make those traits hard-coded into women’s brains.

Yes, Game is vitally important, as is root level, dynamic personal change. I don’t think I need to explain just how important this is. However, looks COUNT, looks MATTER. What I find amazingly ironic is that looks are one of the few areas of change that a Man has DIRECT control over – his body. Barring physical disabilities, you have no excuse not to be in better shape. Why wouldn’t you want the full package? Stop being so Goddamned lazy and accept that you’ll need to exert some effort and sweat to make yourself more attractive. Game and a positive-masculine DJ mindset are vital elements for your attractiveness and well-being, but they WONT make you look any better with your shirt off.

*Side Note: I should also point out that for as much as women will assert that a man’s penis size is irrelevant to their sexual pleasure, often the first insult they’ll hurl at a man in order to shame him is “I’ll bet he’s got a small dick!” You connect the dots.

The following is a cut & paste from a guy I counsel, but he said it was cool if I posted it here for the benefit of others.

At work we’ve had a recent move around of desks and people.
In my new place I am sitting with three chicks I like.

To my left is chick 1:
she likes dogs, looks pretty and has a nice figure. She isn’t hugely confident but has been semi competing for my attention.
To my front is chick 2:
She likes horses, looks nice and has an awesome figure. She has a lot of confidence and has been attempting to gain my attention for most of the day.
To my right is chick 3:
I don’t know what she likes. She looks ok, has a nice body, has medium confidence and has not attempted to gain my attention.

I am leaving this place in a couple of weeks, leaving me open to date people from work.
Which one should I go for and why?

Which one is the hottest? That should be your intitial target and thus the one you pay the least attention to (I didn’t say “no” attention to). From your description it sounds like #2 is the likely candidate, but then, why settle for only one? If you’re getting AIs (approach invitations) from all of these girls – and yes, #3 is also interested just by social proof from the other two – why not use this to your advantage? Stop thinking like a sniper, start thinking like a machine gunner.

Now I’m sure all of the guys reading will think, “Rollo you’re such a moron, how’s this guy supposed to work all 3 of these girls simultaneously?” But remember, many times I’ve posted that women are highly competitive, more competitive than men, only they compete covertly in ways that men are generally unaware of. This guy’s only pitfall he needs to avoid is becoming TOO familiar with any of these girls, because then he’ll become another ‘one of the girls’ in the office. Don’t let on (by behaviors or words) that you in any way are seeing or have the potential to be exclusive to any of them or anyone outside the office either (you don’t have a girlfriend, neither are you looking for one, girls are looking for you). Don’t get chummy with any of them, meaning, no going off to lunch with any of them (or all of them), you have ‘work’ to do or are meeting ‘business associates’ for some ‘side project’ you’re involved in. When you get chummy with any ONE of these women you will have been diffused and they’ll consider you their brother (i.e. she’ll consider sex with you to be incest) or worse still, one of their girlfriends. If this happens your odds with hooking up with any of them is greatly diminished.

Situation Analysis

Lets take a little inventory of what these chicks know about you already. They know where you work and what you do – this is a disadvantage in that it’s a lot of information that they already have a basic understanding of and can extrapolate from. They most likely also have a common sense knowledge of your education level from either casual conversation or by implying it from your employment. Again, another disadvantage, but you can turn these to advantages with the right inferrences. I’m not 100% aware of your situation with, or the individual conditions of these girls so I can only provide you with a general sense of what to do based on all this happening in a vaccuum, but try to think of anything else any one girl, and/or all of them collectively might know about you from any conversations or appearances you presented to any of them.

For instance, how do you dress at work? That might seem innocuous enough a question, but think of what their reaction would be if you dressed more stylish or GQ all of a sudden if they were used to you dressing down for work regularly. They’d know something was up automatically and have you figured out immediately. Rather, if you want, begin gradually dressing up a bit at a time. This sends the message that something is changing with you (for the better obviously) and they’ll be curious. That’s when you can say something like, “oh, I’m working on an independent project for______ (implies extra-workplace ambition) and I’ve been doing _____ (something they wouldn’t expect or don’t know about you, but I’d suggest something artistic or that implies creative intelligence) so I guess I have been dressing a little differently (ambiguous reasoning that infers you have been so involved in your ‘projects’ that you are oblivious to the big, and ‘unintentional’, changes in yourself).” And as if this weren’t enough you ‘allow’ her to point it out to you, thus stroking her own ego and making her feel good for picking up on it and pointing it out to you.

Conversation

Scenarios like this tease interest in women, but remember, mete out your personal information to them like dog treats. The trick is to mine them for information in casual conversation while dropping ‘breadcrumbs’ about yourself in the conversation and this is all too easy to do once you get the knack for it. Keep in mind that women are naturally better with language and non-verbal communication skills than men, so again, use this to your own advantage. Getting a woman to talk about herself has got to be the easiest thing for a man to do since this is what they love most, but listening and picking up on threads in her conversation is the real skill to master. A person who talks about themself is an egoist, a person who talks about others is a gossip, but a person who can get another person to talk about themself is a brilliant conversationalist. The key to conversation is to shape it in such a way that you leave her with an emotional perception of you. It bears repeating that women communicate differently than men, but in doing so they form emotional perceptions with another person (guy or girl) as part of that communication.

Again, use this to your advantage by making her ‘feel’ you when you talk. I’m sure you’ve all heard that men are more ‘visually oriented’ that women, but women are more attuned to voice, touch and smell than men. All of this equates to an overall emotional perception of you. When you enter her environment (she hears your voice, feels your casual touch, and yes, even sees you) she recalls this emotional perception. Remember that you are creating this from your first encounter. Too many guys think that women work just like guys and figure they can easily alter perceptions based on different conditions, you can’t, or at least it doesn’t happen very easily and by then is rarely worth the effort.

Breadcrumbs – Rewarding  Desired Behavior

I also think the ‘breadcrumbs’ technique needs a bit of explaining too. Most desperate guys will more than happily tell a girl his life story, how his Mom is, what he wants from life and women and tell a girl he ‘loves’ her all in the first hour of the first date and then go home to wonder why the girl wants nothing to do with him. He sold the farm on the first date and freely gave away his mystery and challenge by believing the common myth that women want a guy to be “upfront” and “honest”, this is false. Women want challenge, not honesty; full disclosure is the kiss of death.

It’s a lot like sport fishing; if you have a marlin hooked on your line and you immediately yank the rod and reel the line as fast as you can you’ll snap the line, but if you slowly pump the rod and reel the line in gradually (while letting out a bit as needed) and play the fish, you’ll gradually land the big marlin. - breadcrumbs are a way of doing just this. ‘Breadcrumbs’ are little trails for her to follow in your conversation that lead to something about yourself that you want her to find out. If you overtly tell her “I’m studying to be a lawyer/doctor” this bludgeons her with overt information and gives her the emotional impression that you’re ‘trying’ to impress her (i.e. an egoist). But if you offer her a breadcrumb in passing about some case study you’ve just read or how hard the hours of your internship is at the hospital that leads her to a conclusion on her own that she had to make a connection for to understand.

Women LOVE making these connections because it validates their own perceptive abilities in ways men rarely realize. It gives them a feeling of accomplishment when they make these connections. Even these are pretty blatant examples, but you get the drift, the message you want to send her has to be picked up as a breadcrumb that leads her to what you want her to know. This is covert communication and something she’s naturally adept at. Most guys think women wont ‘get it’ and go over into overt communication and drop the interest or else their breadcrumbs are too obvious and then she picks up on your real intent – which is sometimes worse than just being overt! It takes practice, but the key is to err on the side of being too subtle than too ‘in her face’ with a breadcrumb.

Many apologies for my recent absence from blogging. Concurrently launching two new liquor brands in Q2 is proving very time consuming, but it has allowed me to step back briefly enough to review some of my more ‘influential’ posts. Amongst those, none generated more dialog than my essay on Alpha, so I thought it prudent to come back to this very contentious topic.

I understand why guys, both of the red and blue pill variety have a problem with using the terms Alpha and/or Beta; depending on the perspective, terms that are definitive about what someone has an investment in make us uncomfortable. It’s much more comfortable to put those issues into more subjective understandings because when we’re objective about them we can’t help the wondering or the doubt of our own status within that definition. Objective terms are very close to absolutes depending upon who’s doing the defining.

From a generalized perspective, I feel that the terms Alpha and Beta are good reference points in assessing the characteristics that women find arousing in men for both short and long term mating strategies. However, I think that beyond these convenient terms, men need to be more realistic about how they apply to their own self-impressions in contrast with how women are interpreting the Alpha and Beta cues that they exhibit. For the record, at points in my life I’ve personally been the worst, bottom scraping Beta, the douchebag Alpha stud in the foam cannon party in Cancun, and the strong (but lesser) Alpha father and husband. So it’s with this in mind that I think guys shouldn’t believe that their ‘stars are set’ and they’ll never live up to the manosphere standard of Alpha.

Living Up

The reason that so many guys get so bent about what defines an Alpha is usually because they don’t fit that general definition very well. So it’s a logical ego defense to make necessity a virtue (once again) and redefine it to better suit their own conditions. It’s exactly the same dynamic as the debate over Looks vs. Game. Game takes priority for those without Looks and vice versa. A personal definition of “what’s Alpha?” becomes whatever plays to an individual guy’s strengths, and women who can’t appreciate them (i.e. all of them) are relegated to being less-than quality women. Sour grapes are sour, but deductively it makes sense; we want to be the embodiment of what we ‘know’ is attractive to women and others. The worst beta schlub you know thinks he’s Alpha, because every woman he’s ever known has defined for him that being beta is what women want.

Ethics of Alpha

The problem then is looking at the definition objectively. In an objective light it’s difficult to look at ourselves as not measuring up to an Alpha ideal. So it becomes the first recourse to cast suspicion on the whole idea of being Alpha at all. It’s a pissing contest between immature men then. Or is it? There is a LOT of observable, provable evidence that many so-called Alpha traits do in fact elicit very predictable, desired, favorable behaviors (usually breeding precursors) in women. From an evo-psych perspective Alpha is just as unprincipled, just as efficiently ruthless and uncaring as it’s female counterpart – feminine Hypergamy.

So then the definition moves into an ambiguous moral ground; is it ethical to be / act Alpha? To be Alpha implies that you necessarily rise above a certain degree of common mediocrity depending upon the context – whether you do so like a guy from hotchickswithdouchebags.com or like a perfect “honorable” gentlemen is irrelevant, you still position yourself above “other guys”. To some extent this is selfishness or implies a self-importance that questions moral tenets.

At this point I should also add here that women NEVER doubt themselves on moral grounds for outshining their own competition in the sexual market place – they just do so covertly and with a polite smile, unburdened by ethical doubts. Hypergamy is its own excuse.

Alpha Selectivity

And that brings us to the subjectively deductive end of defining Alpha. Every sexual competitor seeks to disqualify their rivals from breeding opportunities. Most animals fight for territory or harem rights. Humans generally (though certainly not exclusively) do the same combat in the psychological. We seek to disqualify sexual competitors by calling into doubt the sexual credibility of a rival. “Yeah, he’s really good looking, but that means he’s probably gay” from a man, or “You think that blonde with the big boobs is hot? Girls who dress like that are usually sluts” from a woman are both psychological, sexually disqualifying forms of combat.

This also applies to the observably, provably, sexually successful male capable of OVERTLY flaunting his high sexual value with two (or more) concurrent women. He must be of low moral character to so flagrantly manipulate his multiple girlfriends, right? His observable success, as a sexual competitor, conflicts with what a beta believes should constitute a beta-defined definition of Alpha-ness as it characterizes him personally. Ergo, the polygamist either must be disqualified as a sexual competitor based on subjective (moral) grounds, or a guy is forced to alter his own definition of Alphaness and therefore his own self-estimate.

Every guy has a Game. Everyone thinks they are Alpha in their own way. Even the worst doormat Nice Guy, hammered flat by women for a lifetime, thinks his supplications or Capn’ Save-a-Ho mindset is the best way to win a woman’s intimacy. He’s invested in thinking he’s unique in his understanding of how best to arrive at sex with a woman. Likewise, Alpha-ness is a moving target that’s conveniently applied or disparaged based on personal circumstances.

Personally I believe Alpha-ness can, and does, have a concrete, objective definition. The problem arises when anyone asserts that they can definitively outline Alpha traits when it conflicts with the subjectiveness and ego-investments of those who define it personally for themselves. So we get a wide variety of what makes a man Alpha – he’s the guy of high moral character, princely ambition and integrity, as well as the self-important cad banging his wife and “their” girlfriend. They are BOTH Alpha. Thus I would propose that while certainly contextual, objective Alpha-ness is NOT exclusive to social status or personal integrity, but rather an attitude of expressly manifested traits. These can be innate or learned, but the definition is not dependent on moral grounds (or a lack of). A scoundrel and a champion can be equally Alpha or Beta in their own psyche’s.

From the inimitable STR8UP (he knows who he is) in venerated SoSuave archives

Women either HAVE an “A” guy, or they desperately want one. It has something to do with needing that emotional rush.

What does this mean?

It means that if a woman already HAS an “A” guy, you either have to be the right guy at the right time that has what it takes to usurp the crown, or you will be relegated to “B” or “C” status, depending upon her level of attraction.

See, my problem lately is that I have been meeting a fair amount of women who I manage to get to “B” status with, but lately becoming that elusive “A” has proven difficult. I have to give myself credit though. I can honestly say that I DO NOT accept a “C” position, which is basically “friend zone” orbiter, and I am quick to recognize when it’s a losing battle to try to become an “A” guy.

I have seen this play out with women I have been with and even MORE so with other people and their relationships. You meet a chick and get along well. She shows most of the classic signs of high interest when you are WITH her, however when it comes time to get together she flakes. Why does this happen?

Well, lots of times it’s because she might like you, she might even REALLY like you, but unless you got what it takes to dethrone her “A” guy, you are really nothing more than a temporary distraction/ego booster for her.

The “A” guy could be an Alpha ex b/f who cheated on her and dumped her and still calls her from time to time to keep the hook set. Or he could be a guy who she is currently dating who has so far refused to commit to her exclusively. He could even be the guy in the corner office who she has done nothing more than exchanged smiles with, who she has built up in her head to some sort of god-like status. Or, he could be any guy in between.

The point is, there are MILLIONS of women out there who are walking around with their heads in another place, TELLING people they are single, even going on dates, even getting MARRIED TO OTHER MEN, who are actually NOT really single. In their minds they are having a relationship with Tom, Dick, or Harry. Sure, she may be out on a date with YOU. She might even be laughing at your cheeseball humor and touching your leg when she talks to you. But deep down inside she can’t wait to get home to check her facebook or email to see if her fantasy man sent her something.

Basically what I’m saying is that it’s often hard to tell if a woman is secretly longing for another man. All you can do is keep your eyes open, and even then it’s tough when a chick is flipping her hair and leaning toward you and talking about your next date ten minutes into your first one just to flake on you three days later. But this is why you need to be EXTRA vigilant with women, and not invest too much time into a losing battle.

The easy analysis of this phenomenon is the 5 Minutes of Alpha dynamic, but what the ‘A’ guy represents is the feminine version of ONEitis. While a guy may pine away for months or years for a woman who’ll never reciprocate intimacy, he’s more easily self-convinced of another ONE who will be sexual with him. This is how men are wired; at some point the diminishing returns of an emotional investment gradually drop to nothing when presented with another, more viable, sexual opportunity. Not so for women. Women being primarily emotional beings, sex cements that emotional investment in her ONE. This is precisely why the boyfriend (even an abject Beta boyfriend) to whom she loses her virginity tends to become such an overwhelming emotional proposition for her. Barring a forced situation, more often than not he becomes the ‘A’ guy by default.

Even when this isn’t the case, the A guy becomes the benchmark who sets the bar for her B & C guys. As I proposed in Five Minutes of Alpha, be less concerned with a woman’s notch count and more concerned with the impact the last Alpha lover she had etched on her psyche. Bear in mind it was women, the feminine, who first proposed the notion of the Soulmate, or the ONE, in terms of romanticism, not men. Men have only recently bought into this since at first it seemed to prove “sensitivity” as a means to a woman’s sexuality, and then as an ego-invested part of their own personalities to be used as AFC leverage to keep a straying woman around longer. It’s kind of a using her own weapon against her (which never really works because his approach is rational and hers emotional) dynamic in Beta Game.

There was a topic on the Tom Leykis show on (or around) Valentines day where he asked married or LTR female callers to call in and tell him if they were really with their “Prince Charming” – the guy they idealized, dreamed of, swept them off their feet and was the ONE soulmate for them. Of about 30 callers maybe 2 called in to say they were with their ONE. The rest had very emotionally charged testimonials about their ONE who they still ache for and how their ‘B’ guy, the man they settled for (in most cases had children with) doesn’t know it and could never measure up to their ‘A’ Man.

I think there’s a certain degree of mythologizing the ‘A’ guy since he’s unattainable and therefore really unknowable. That casts him in an idealization that can really never be proven. It’s like women who get addicted to romance novels; the rush comes from the imagining, not the actualizing. However this puts the ‘B’ guy in a bad position – particularly if he’s an AFC who thinks his ship’s finally come in and the girl who settled for him capitulates to marrying him because the situation is hopeless with her ‘A’ guy. Of course this doesn’t have to be limited to marriage; I’ve personally known women in live-in situation who’ve left ‘B’ guy to go back to the original ‘A’ guy to have that self destruct and go back again to ‘B’ guy who welcomes her with open arms because he thinks it makes him the bigger man..

The Grue on SoSuave had a recent encounter with a rebounding woman that I found interesting. Have a read of his story for the details, but suffice it to say that date #2 pretty much killed the vibe. Over all I think he handled the situation by the book, but this last part I wanted to riff on,..

Irene called again on Sunday to apologize for her behavior during our date…I was cool with her but cordial. Then she repeated that she had “nothing to offer…” and I replied that I am more than cool with that because I like to be with people who have something to offer…and then I said goodbye….[ed. Nails!]

She then sent a text message about 2 hours later saying

“I wish I weren’t afraid and could give you an opportunity with me! Thanks for understanding!”

I guess she just couldn’t resist getting a jab in…I don’t think I’ll reply at all…

Grue played this perfectly, but this last text wasn’t a jab, it was meant to affirm for herself that she’s still a good person. Think back to your plugged-in AFC experiences. Ever wonder why a woman who not only rejected you, but completely disrespected your efforts to prove you were the perfect boyfriend felt compelled to making things right after the rejection? Women cannot bear the thought that someone, somewhere might think they’re a bitch, psychotic, or may not actually like them “for them”. It’s like they can’t sleep at night knowing that someone doesn’t like them. Proportionally this can be attributed to women’s innate need for attention and the fear of social ostracization they learn in early childhood, but it goes a step deeper than this.

The problem is that when a woman seeks your post-rejection understanding it’s not a genuine contrition for women. The average guy thinks, “wow, maybe there’s more to her than I thought if she’s self-aware enough to be apologizing to me”, but the latent purpose is to make herself feel better knowing that ‘you’re cool with her’. The apology is for her, not you.

Even for men that a woman has no sexual attraction for, women will still look for this confirmation of their likability.

This is a very common dynamic for women when a Man outright refuses an LJBF rejection, or he ‘goes dark’ on her with a No Contact cutoff. From a behavioral perspective, she’s seeking to reestablish the reward of his attention (which she didn’t have to earn previously), but beyond that she’s looking to protect her ego by getting him to agree with the ‘correctness’ of her assessment of him in having rejected him.

I can do better

Whenever a woman decides that a man isn’t worth her investment of intimacy, she’s making an estimation of him. That estimation may come immediately in that she’s not physically attracted to him, or as part of a process of evaluating his personality, status, social intelligence, social proof, provisioning capacity and/or any number of other criteria, but the end result is always based on the same hypergamous question: “Can I do better?” which is really the root fundamental of every shit test.

Answering this question with a ‘Yes’ will always involve a certain degree of self-conscious conceit for a woman. And because there are only two parties involved in her rejection (her and him), she has to reconcile for herself having come to the conclusion that ‘she can do better’, with the guilt of being conceited enough to reject the guy. As I stated, this is by order of degree; if a guy is so repulsive to her, if she has perceptually better options available or if she’s more predisposed to sociopathy in general, this guilt of conceit may simply be a non-issue for her to internalize. However, if a man has invested himself in being accommodating, sweet, generous and interested in her, this guilt of conceit will be more pronounced, thus requiring her to seek reconciliation for herself and affirmation from him that “she’s not a bad person” for having concluded that she ‘can do better’.

Right about now you’re thinking, “that’s great Rollo, but how do I benefit from this?” Two ways, first being knowledge is power – understanding women’s internal process and the predictable ego-preservation that results from it will give you a much better gauge in reading a woman’s interest level. It’s part and parcel of the Medium being the Message, so be pragmatic in understanding when you’re being rejected and that her pseudo-contrition is NOT a fresh sign of interest or regret on her part. Men with the best grasp of Amused Mastery are the ones who’ve learned women’s internal processes to the point of predictability – and thus find it amusing.

Second, and more useful, is manipulating that process (assuming the reward is actually worth it). Doubt is a key element in stimulating a woman’s imagination about you. Understanding the dynamic of women’s guilt of conceit from the outset will help in consolidating her interest in you. Hypergamy demands resolution so powerfully in women that evolution has hard-coded it into their subconsciousness. But the enemy of hypergamy is doubt; it’s the guess work that women have to do and the subsequent rationalizations for the decisions based on that doubt that confounds hypergamy. If you suspect that a woman is beginning to find you too accessible, adjust your Game to stimulate doubt.

Nothing says “I love you” like saturated fat and slutty lingerie.

In the U.S. businesses expect men to spend on average $186 for Valentine’s day – over three times the average a woman spends on a man. Explain to me why women own V-Day? If it’s a “celebration of romantic love” why should it be an annual shit test?

Lets clarify a few things about Vagintines Day since it’s become probably the most irksome manifestation of westernized/commercialized romanticism. V-Day is far and away the most vulgar display of female entitlement. On no occasion – even a woman’s birhtday or her wedding anniversary – is this sense of entitlement more pronounced and our refined commercialization of this entitlement/expectation simply twists the knife in further for men to live up to this with ZERO expectation or entitlment to any reciprocation. He gets ‘lucky‘ if his romantic offerings are sufficient to appease her (social) media fueled expectations of ‘good enough’ to reward him with sex.

And exploit the media does. I can’t get away from it; Every radio station, every TV show, every newspaper and magazine article. Go to askmen.com right now, I guarantee there’s a “how not to fuck up this year’s V-Day for her” article there.

I listened to a talk radio show that I regularly tune into on my commute home on Friday; it was about what not buy this year. “Don’t buy lingerie, she knows it’s really a gift for you” or “Don’t pick up flowers at the gas station, women know they’re cheap”, and “God forbid you pick up some cheap jewlery or stop at one of those roadside urchins selling prepared flower baskets or arrangements – women know you didn’t think about it until you were on the way home.” On my way to work this morning, different show, same list. [Side Note: Never buy a woman lingerie, she will never be happy with it. A woman has to do this on her own to "feel sexy", make sure it fits her right, and it's HER IDEA. When you buy it for her it's contrived and it is overt and overt is often the kiss of death for a try-hard guy.]

Why wouldn’t women have these expectiations? They’re relentlessly marketed to as the primary consumers in western culture. V-Day isn’t a celebration of romantic love, it’s a machine that drives a wedge of expectation and entitlement in between otherwise happy, relatively contented couples.

I’m not down on the idea of a special occasion to celebrate love (I actually proposed to Mrs. Tomassi on V-Day 15 years ago), I am down on the twisted expectations that have been perverted into it that puts a woman on some pedestal of entitlement by commercialized popularization of this feminized ideal. Why isn’t there an official “fuck your boyfriend like a wild animal” holiday or a list of criteria to meet that’ll make his day special? “Show him how appreciative you are of all his dependability and hard work this year – buy some lingerie ON YOUR OWN and pretend that you like him cuming in your mouth on his special day!” If women are so liberated and interested in equality, one would think this would be the first thing to occur to them. We need a special day to make us apprecitae each other?

Gentlemen, beware of falling into the trap of negotiating desire for Valentine’s Day performance. Don’t be lulled into thinking Game is any less necessary on V-Day. In fact, I can’t think of a more direct illustration of how the feminine encourages the transaction of men’s goods and services in exchange for a woman’s sexuality than reserving a ‘special day’ just for it. Remember, you cannot negotiate genuine desire; and with the right art, a bag of Skittles can be a more romantic gesture than all the sonnets, flowers and jewelry your inner romantic soul will ever be appreciated for by her.

Note to PUAs

Valentine’s Day is ripe with opportunity for an enterprising Man with the ability to see it. Go hit the clubs tomorrow night, particularly the ones that cater to a 25-40 y.o. affluent crowd. There’s a million different venues you can hit, all with promotions to help single ladies feel better about not having a date – usually with genderist drink specials to help your approach too. You’ll notice impromptu GNOs (girl’s night out) set up just for this occasion to prove to themselves “they don’t need men to have a good time.” A good PUA couldn’t arrange a better opportunity to hook up in multiple sets.

Don’t go play ‘pity friend’ with any girl on V-Day, don’t be the “you’re such a great friend” consolation date.. Call up your best wing man and sarge on the best night of the year to sarge. Wedding receptions aren’t even as good as V-Day for this.

V-Day in the Matrix

Just in case you weren’t already convinced of the complete totality of media control that the Matrix has, let me offer yet one more Valentine’s Day example:

I was in a grocery store this weekend picking up something to grill and thought it would be a convenient time to pick up a Valentine’s Card for my wife since it’s coming this week. So I meander over to the greeting cards section to sift this years crop of mushy sentiment.  Much to my disgust the only cards available in the “For My Wife” section of the Valentines Cards (and I mean ONLY cards available) come in two types:

A.) The sentimental, “My life was nothing before you and would be nothing without you”, tripe that reduces a man to a simpering, codependent who owes his very existence to the woman who deigned to marry the poor soul.

B.)The “humorous” Valentine that is essentially the greeting card equivalent of Everybody Loves Raymond or Family Guy. These are basically intended to beg for a wife’s forgiveness for all of his uniquely male faults and foibles, that only she can solve by virtue of her infallible feminine wiles. Judging from the ‘humorous’ intent of these cards, no man is capable of feeding himself much less ask for direction or leave a toilet seat down, but on “her special day” this card is meant to prompt an appologetic laugh.

Needless to say I’ll be making my own card this year, but for fuck’s sake, how can we ever get a break from this shit when we’re ankle-bitten at every opportunity? You simply cannot buy a card that doesn’t force a man to be self-depricating.

Nothing is more threatening yet simultaneously attractive to a woman than a man who is aware of his own value to women.

My use of the word “threat” here isn’t to imply malice. I’m sure more simplistic associations with violence or conflict is the natural one, but a “threat” is a challenge – how one deals with it is what’s at issue. As I stated in the Three Strikes thread,

Women’s sexual strategy is very schizophrenic – ideally women want a Man that other women want to fuck, but in order to assess his sexual market value to other women he’s got to have exercisable options for her to compete against, or at least display indirect social proof to that effect. So, she needs to limit his options while simultaneously determining he has those options.

This internal conflict between a want for security and provisioning, and a need for the ‘gina tingles that only the excitement indignation, drama and Alpha dominance can stimulate is the fundamental root for women’s shit tests. From Plate Theory VI:

Essentially a shit test is used by women to determine one, or a combination of these factors:

a.) Confidence – first and foremost
b.) Options – is this guy really into me because I’m ‘special’ or am I his only option?
c.) Security – is this guy capable of providing me with long term security?

Women’s shit testing is a psychologically evolved, hard-wired survival mechanism. Women will shit test men as autonomously and subconsciously as a men will stare at a woman’s big boobs. They cannot help it, and often enough, just like men staring at a nice rack or a great ass, even when they’re aware of doing it they’ll still do it. Men want to verify sexual availability to the same degree women want to verify a masculine dominance / confidence.

For a woman, to encounter a man with a healthy awareness of his own value to women, this constitutes a threat. Here is a man for whom’s attention women will demonstrably compete for, AND he knows this. This is the most basic affront to the feminine imperative; to be unplugged, of high SMP value and to derive confidence from it. Therefore, in order to actualize her own sexual strategy, his self-confidence MUST be put into self-doubt, because if such a man were to use this knowledge to his own benefit he may not select her from a pool of better prospective women. Thus she must ask “Are you really sure of yourself? You think you’re so great? Maybe you’re just egotist? Don’t tempt fate.”

In this example we can see the conflict inherent in women’s sexual strategy; she wants the Alpha dominance of a confident Man, but not so confident that he can exercise his options with other women well enough to make an accurate estimation of her own SMV.

Ambiguity in men’s assessment of a woman’s true sexual market value is the primary tool of the feminine imperative.

The same characteristics that give him his confidence and acknowledged sense of worth are exactly the same things that women want to be associated with. Even the most controlling, domineering wife still wants to tell her friends that the AFC she married is a “real Man”, and even after privately berating him, will defend him as such because anything less is a reflection on her own self-image. She wants to be with a Man that other men want to be, and other women want to fuck, because it confirms for her that she’s of an equal or higher value to attract such a Man.

Women don’t want a man to cheat, but they love a Man who could cheat.

That is the threat and the attraction. Women want a Man that has confidence in his own value; that’s sexy, but the more he self-realizes this the greater the anxiety is that she’ll be found wanting as he better understands his options. So it becomes necessary to develop social contrivances that are standardized across the feminine gender that limit the full recognition of masculine self-value. Thus masculinity is ridiculed, men become characterized as slaves to their sexuality, and masculinity becomes doubted by virtue of itself. In a global sense, the feminine imperative relies on the same ambiguity women will individually employ to confuse the efforts of men to assess their true SMV. By means of social conventions, psychologically force him to doubt his own SMV and women become the arbiters of it.

Race to Awareness

Because of women’s relatively short window of peak sexual viability it is imperative that men be as unaware of their slower, but progressively increasing SMV for as long as possible in order for them to achieve the prime directive of female hypergamy; realize the best genetic options and the best provisioning options she has the capacity to attract in that peak window. If Men become aware of their SMV before a woman can consolidate on her options with monogamous commitment her sexual strategy is defeated.

The mistake (and the binary retort) is to think this need for contrivances was concocted in whole as some grand sisterhood conspiracy. This just proves an ignorance of social constructs. For a social contrivance to be such, it necessitates being repeated by society WITHOUT a formal conception – meaning we learn the contrivance from seeing it, internalizing it and repeating it ourselves without forethought. The best social contrivances are inconspicuous and rarely questioned because they’ve been learned without having been formally taught. This is why I think encouraging men NOT to bother trying to understand women is in itself a social convention. Don’t look at that man behind the curtain, just accept it for what it is, enjoy the show, you’re better off that way, the Mighty Oz has spoken.

This is the threat that Game represents to the feminine imperative. Widely shared, objective assessments of Men’s SMV and how it develops is the antithesis of the female sexual strategy. Women’s greatest fear is that they could become the ‘selected’ instead of the ‘selectors’.