Tuesday, December 29, 2009

PUA for LTR


First and foremost, commenter Patrissimo invited me to co-author on a new blog, PUA for LTR. I have politely declined, as I have a hard enough time writing here on my own blog as well as regularly contributing to the Spearhead. This was the first time I heard of this blog...and was somewhat amused to see a post dedicated to my own commentary I had contributed to Roissy's blog in the past.

You can read it here - as well as see the commentary of a bunch of people that criticized me, had no clue what they were talking about, and had made judgments of me, my wife and our life, of which they really know nothing about.

I've written a rather extensive response broken up into 4 different comments (that are currently awaiting moderation).

I'm going to re-post them here, as my FINAL say on this topic. I'm sick of people making judgments about my wife and I based on the little snippets of my life that I decided to share in an attempt to help other men who were in a similar situation as myself.

Before I get to my responses to the commentary on that blog, I want to make a few things real simple and clear:

I AM NOT AN "ALPHA."

I have never claimed to be one. Rather, my entire point in contributing to Roissy's blog at that time was to relate my experiences in identifying my own behaviors and mindsets that were, for lack of a better term I was aware of at the time, "beta." By focusing on "beta" behaviors and how to avoid or correct them, perhaps many people have mistakenly thought I was claiming the mantle-hood of "Alpha."

For lack of a better term, studying "game" (which is what I referred to previously as "taking the red pill"), gave me insight into what behaviors and attitudes were attractive to a woman's hypergamous instincts and what behaviors and actions were repellent to that same instinct. Once I stopped the repellent behaviors and incorporated the attractive behaviors, I guess you could say I DID become an "alpha" -- for my wife, within the bounds of our marriage.

But other than that, my previous use of the term "beta" and "beta-ization" has nothing to do with claiming to be some kind of "Alpha" or a "PUA" that could have women eating out of the palm of my hand.

I AM NOT A PUA.

I've been married 12 years now. I love my wife more than my own life. We have made a family together, and I am determined to raise my own children to benefit from the knowledge that I had gained from making all of the mistakes I hope to help them avoid when they grow up. If I am any label, I would proudly wear that of PATRIARCH. That is what I aspire to, and what I believe I now fully live up to.

I DO NOT "CONTROL" OR "INTIMIDATE" OR "MANIPULATE" MY WIFE.

On the contrary, the only real difference studying "GAME" has given me, was to learn the most important lesson of all: Do not let your wife's emotional state control, manipulate or intimidate YOU. I no longer live my life as if my wife were my authority figure. I am my own authority figure. She accepts my authority because she wants to be a part of my life. That is how a complementary relationship between a man and a woman should work. That's what Patriarchy USED to be, but has now been socially engineered nearly into oblivion.

I DO NOT PUT UP AN ACT OR A FRONT. I DID NOT ADOPT A FAKE PERSONA THAT I CONSTANTLY STRIVE TO MAINTAIN.

No, I learned to see my own behaviors and actions and how they interacted in dealing with hers. I learned what worked and what didn't. I also learned that the things I did that were causing her to be upset with me WHERE CONTEMPTIBLE, WEAK and UN-MASCULINE. I learned from my mistakes and have changed my entire outlook on life and the way I interact with ALL people, not just my wife.

At this point in time, I am NOBODY's bitch. I live MY LIFE how I want to. I AM going my own way. It just so happens I have a wife who is going that way along with me.

All that being said, here were my various responses I gave to the critical commenters there. I hope this clarifies things:



First and foremost, I have to respond to this:

Personally, *I* would be living a lie if I was married to Dave’s wife and felt I needed to treat her the way he does all the time in order to maintain the marriage… but then, I’m not him.

Oh really? And just what do I do “all the time” in order to “maintain” my marriage? Just how do I “treat” her that you find so hard, difficult or objectionable? Some of you guys are talking out of your asses in trying to assess my reality based on what limited, subjective and contextual scenarios I’ve described for you all.

To tell you all the truth…once Roissy assembled everything I’d written into one long post, I decided to simply step back from his blog and let others contribute their own stories similar to mine. I had written enough, and I had gotten to the point where I was starting to reveal a little too much personal info on the internet. Hawaii is a small place, and the last thing I really want to do is have my writings on the internet somehow be used against me in real life. I have taken the red pill…and nothing makes blue pill takers angrier than confronting a person who tells them everything they believe and do is based on lies, propaganda and indoctrination. I’ve had this discussion one too many times in real life with friends and family members and seen too many people desperately determined to cling to their version of blue pill truth and won’t even contemplate a contrary viewpoint.

My study of “GAME” was NOT my attempts at becoming a “PUA,” nor was it simply “faking” a personality to “become” attractive to my wife.

It was an awakening to the truth.

I finally was able to see through the illusions and lies propagated by a lifetime of indoctrination by the mainstream media, and educational institutions I’ve spent most of my life attending.

Also, the biggest thing I had to overcome was seeing the truth of my own parents relationship with each other and how it set me up with a blueprint for failure when I myself grew up and got married.

Where it not for their devout faith and devotion to their church, my parents would have been divorced many many years ago. I do not doubt this in the least.

And the biggest thing I had internalized from being raised by parents bound together by religious doctrine rather than true love and respect for each other was the total pedestal-ization of women in my mind. Till this very day, metaphorically speaking, my mother says “jump” and my father says “how high.” And she has seething contempt for him, and she shows it in a myriad of ways.

And yet my Father is an upstanding, devout, religious, honorable man who is always ready to take the shirt off of his own back and give it to a stranger in need.

His entire life is devoted to his church, and he spends considerable amount of time helping church members in need.

And he has ALL women pedastalized in his own mind.

He has a twisted, Christianity-warped notion that women are the “pure” sex, and that all men are debased, sexist pigs with evil lust that can only be controlled by submitting to female authority in the covenant of marriage.

And in THEIR church (I haven’t attended since I was 14, and I never will again either.) the “herbivore white knight” mentality is almost virtually the 11th commandment.

Mothers are feted on Mother’s Day in that church. All mothers are asked to stand amongst the congregation during the service, so that all the young men of the church can give them flowers in honor of being sacred mothers.

On Father’s day, the Preacher gets up and administers a harangue and excoriates Father’s for failing to make the sacrifices necessary to make their wives and their children happy.

And I notice in this church, most of the men are like my father, and most of the women regularly get together and gossip about their own husbands like they are all schmucks to be manipulated and treated contemptuously. The women in this church will regularly berate and chastise grown men in front of a group, and these emasculated men only trying to live “righteously” take it like simpering, sackless wimps.

THIS is the kind of indoctrination I was raised with.

THIS is what I learned to overcome through great introspection, experimentation and observation. By stumbling across the “PUA”-sphere of the internet, I came across a multitude of viewpoints on the female gender and my own perception of male gender roles and how they complemented each other when each lived out their role according to the laws of attraction, rather than the false lies of cultural misandry, feminist ideology, and a Feminized, Matriarchal Christian Chivalry mindset I had been brainwashed with my entire young adult life.

I also learned precisely what behavior I had when I was dating my wife that caused her attraction to me….and how once I got married, I stopped acting that way and had fallen into the template of my parent’s unhappy marriage. My wife had begun the long, slipperly slope of falling out of RESPECT for me…just as my Mom has none for my own hard working, “nice-guy” father who will bend over backwards to help and serve EVERYONE in his life (not just my mom.)

I also recognized that many of the behaviors and attitudes espoused by the PUA-sphere were basically a lesson I had never been really exposed to growing up…on how masculinity roles complement feminine roles to inspire attraction…and that you cannot beg, plead or convince a women to love, lust and respect you. You can only get that by being true to yourself and fulfilling your masculine role in a complementary relationship.

And I saw many of these “traits” in my wife’s father. Not just in his relationship with his wife (my mother in law) but also with all the women in his family. He was a “natural.”

I also recognized the way in which my FIL treated my wife was basically the entire “game” mindset I had studied on the internet.

He constantly “negs” my wife, his wife, and my sister-in-laws. They eat it up, and eagerly engage in verbal “one-upmanship” matches of mildly insulting putdowns (never really mean things). It’s playful banter.

I also noticed that my FIL basically ruled his house with quiet, confident power. He almost never really ‘laid down the law’ and basically let my MIL make most of the mundane, day-to-day decisions…but if he felt ANY issue was in need of his input, his word was LAW. Not because he was oppressive, demanding and overbearing…but because my MIL and his children all respected him, and they all lived in fear of HIS emotional state, not my MIL’s.

This, of course, was the exact opposite situation of my own household, where my Father lived in perpetual fear of my Mother’s emotional state…and how I had let my own relationship dynamic devolve into.

By learning to recognize the “pretty lies” that had lead me to following out a dysfunctional relationship dynamic, I was able to turn it around and recognize the ugly truths.

When I saw how dramatic it turned my own relationship around, I almost couldn’t believe it. But it was not just with my wife…it was with my own self and how I interact with the rest of the world as well.

I have not “faked” anything. I do not live a lie. I do not put up a front.

Was I some spineless wimp that “magically transformed” by studying game? Hardly. In fact, being raised by a doormat of a father and a domineering mother, I was a doormat that was harassed and picked on mercilessly by bullies and contemptuous girls until my early teen years.

Than one day, something inside of me snapped.

I got sick of being a spineless, sack-less wimp, and I took up martial arts, weight lifting, fishing, hunting and other recreations with groups of older men. I “toughened” myself up with regards to other men. I eventually went in the completely opposite direction from my early teen years. In my early 20’s, I fought in some amateur fights, became a nightclub bouncer and learned precisely what it means to have some balls and suck up your fear and ‘man up.’ I’ve kicked ass and had my ass kicked.

But relating to women? I was still clueless….but I was also a man with a mission. When I met my wife, I was going to college, training martial arts 3 times a week, and always hunting, fishing, surfing, hiking, camping…something. I basically invited my wife into MY world, and she fell in love with me. I constantly took the “leadership” role and she followed without question. I wasn’t “gaming” her, but neither was I a spineless suck-up being a doormat in an attempt to gain her approval. I tried my hardest to be entertaining by being active and planning and carrying out activities for us both, and she loved doing all these different things with me.

She eagerly accepted my proposal of marriage after we dated for several years. After graduating from college and getting my first job, and getting married, all that changed. Her biggest complaint for years was “we don’t do anything anymore.”

But instead of taking the initiative and re-focusing on my mission…I made my “mission” the endless and fruitless attempt to supplicate and please her in a bid to try and make her happy…just as my father has done for my mother her entire life. And it did nothing but slowly kill her attraction and respect for me.

“GAME” made me see the truth of my situation, and helped me reverse it in dramatic fashion.

In short, here was my former mindset…an example of my pathetic, supplicating spinelessness when trying to deal with an upset wife I had way up there on my mental pedestal:

Her: “We don’t do anything anymore!”
Me: “Well…what would you like to do than?”
Her: “I don’t know…why do we always do the same thing every weekend? Dinner and movies…dinner and movies!”
Me: “Well, what would you like to do than? What would make you happy?”
Her: {in complete disgust with me at this point} – “Nothing!”


I cringe just writing that…but that was my reality for a long, long time.

Now?

Me: I have plans for us this weekend, Woman. (Or Wife. or Wench. or Mate. Something playfully misogynistic never fails….)
Her: What do you mean, husband? (Or “my Man” she really does respond to this…)
Me: I mean, don’t go making plans with your friends, you have a date.
Her: {Getting excited} Oooh, what would that be?
Me: You’ll see.

This, I hope, illustrates the fundamental difference in MY mindset that has changed the entire dynamic of our interpersonal relationship.

Do some of you get it now?

I simply revel in masculine behavior, rather than try to suppress it and live in perpetual apology for being male – which is by and large the cultural paradigm of our modern day society…except in my own case it was reinforced and magnified by a “Christian” church community that preached implicit misandry as a tenet of their religious doctrine.

THAT is the summation of what I tried to convey by contributing my anecdotal experience at Roissy’s.

As for Lady Raine…LMAO.

I’m highly amused that you presume to be some sort of expert on people’s relative happiness based on internet interactions. You have no clue, and furthermore, it is your own personally revealed details of your own sordid life, your own endless rationalizations and justifications for your mistakes you’ve made that not only impact your own life, but that of your child’s…that are more than enough evidence to KNOW your disapproval and conjecture more than verify to my own mind how right I am and how deluded and shameless you are.

But have no fear. The day will come when you will most likely realize that your poor choices in life have negatively affected your son. Will you still tell yourself your pretty lies…or will you ever face up to the ugly truths?

You truly are the penultimate representation of the contemptuous, obnoxious and self-righteous modern american female that is INCAPABLE of forming a stable, happy family with a worthy man who would be the ultimate role model for your boy to mold his own life after.

No…that would infringe on your own selfish narcissism. Having children is supposed to be a sacrifice BY BOTH PARENTS to benefit your children. You are not willing to sacrifice your sense of independence and empowerment you have by being a hard working single mom paying her own way and asking nothing of men to help you fulfill your life other than as a masturbatory sex toy hook ups or kitchen bitch mangina’s who still long for your affection, and which you shamelessly exploit.

You know nothing of me other than what I’ve written here and elsewhere…and there is far more to my story than I’ve let on. I tried to focus on the key points of my own realizations SIMPLY TO HELP OTHER MEN.

I see many, many men that were raised with the exact same mindset that hindered me and nearly sabotaged my own relationship with my wife.

You, on the other hand, have related your entire life onto the internet out of some strange desire to achieve some sort of reality show-type of fame. A shameless attention whore who thinks she’s smarter than everyone else…but can’t even recognize her own faults and mistakes although everyone else can plainly see them in your self-absorbed writings and rantings on the internet.

My story is one of having learned from my mistakes, correcting my behavior, and turning my life around.

Yours is a story of how everyone else has done you wrong, but you still managed to overcome it all through sheer awesomeness, hard work and superior intellect.

I’ll give you the hard working part…at least you are not another parasite welfare queen, nor do you use the biased family court system to trap some man into becoming your provider against his will.

But you really are not as brilliant and intelligent as you think you are.



Quoted from Lady Raine:

I hate to be so crass, but that’s at the root of it. Guys like Dave seem to think that “controlling” a woman is what makes you manly.

No, a masculine man has no need to intimidate, manipulate, or control his partner. He is confident enough to want her to be with him because she WANTS to be……. and is also confident enough to get another woman if she DOESN’T want to be.

It’s pretty entertaining of you to take a potshot at me that has no basis in reality, but rather you constructed a caricature of my life based on your own biases and misconceptions of “GAME” and the “PUA” community.

See, you actually have the TRUTH of my experience here in the latter part of your comment…but got it completely wrong in the first part in which you’ve mistakenly judged that I had done nothing other than adopt a PUA mentality to “control, intimidate and manipulate” my wife.

No, I learned how to be that confident man that she wants to be with. My wife has the extended family support system and the means to leave me at any time. She always has…and she almost did leave me on more than one occasion.

I do not “intimidate, manipulate or control” her. I simply no longer have her up on my pedestal.

I’ve become the man on her pedestal – which is what satisfies her hypergamous instinct. This is why we she proudly brags to her friends and co-workers that she’s been happily married for 12 years now (funny how her current feelings about me and our marriage have extended to her overall opinion of our entire marriage experience. heh.)

You, on the other hand, have YOURSELF on your own pedestal.




Quote from Miles Anderson:

It appears to me that Dave and Roissy both share immense fear leading to hate. This is amusing given both writers focus on their “alphaness”. I think this is sad. Both are articulate and occasionally have moments of intense clarity. It is sad both are associated with the Spearhead as most writing there is sophomoric.
LMAO.

No fear…and no hate here. And I have NEVER claimed to be an “alpha” or “focused” on my “alphaness.” I merely have endeavored to show how my personal experience illustrates how our society and cultural institutions inculcate “beta-ness” in men that lead them down a path of dysfunctional relationships with women.

If you read that last sentence and don’t understand that, you never will.



Quote from Nicholas Weininger:

Agreed. This is what gets me about so much PUA advice: it *does not treat women as fully reasonable and reasoning beings*. And so, even in this supposedly more “constructive” LTR situation, “Dave” is playing stupid little games with his wife, being a cocky bullshit artist, instead of doing the hard work of communicating with her honestly about what each of them actually want and need, of laying bare deep insecurities and weaknesses in an atmosphere of trust and forgiveness.

Ooooh, you got me all figured out, don’t you?

Let me tell you something, Nicholas, you have the exact mindset I used to have. I thought being open, trying to communicate honestly and laying bare deep insecurities and all the other pretty lies you have internalized where the keys to making her happy. I would constantly BEG her to “communicate.”

Guess what…that “happy” relationship only exists in your deluded, blue-pill-addled mind.

You and all the other white knights that sum up my anecdotal experiences as “playing stupid little games with his wife, being a cocky bullshit artist” are fools.

Watch just about any drama, TV, movie or play that involves a seduction by a leading man and a female character…take note of the playful banter most such scenes depict. Note the spark…the sexual energy that is generated between the two when a woman verbally challenges him, and he is more than enough to meet her challenge. That’s called “flirting.” That’s what “playing stupid little games with my wife” involves. It’s PLAYFUL. It’s FUN. And it leads to true bonding. Because I am able to bond with her like that, I literally seduce her repeatedly over and over and over again…and it never fails to keep her happy.

Does that constitute the entirety of our relationship? Hell no. One thing I’ve learned is that by learning how to verbally and psychologically seduce my wife by “playing these stupid games” I’ve made my wife fall in love with me all over again. So now, if I choose to “reveal my deepest insecurities” she has enough respect, attraction and admiration for me (because I entertain her with my “bullshit” as you so naively call it”), it does not diminish my stature as a man in her eyes.

A man that a woman does not respect, (which in turn means lust and love), is man who will only experience her contempt if he tries to bare his “deepest insecurities and fears” to her.

If anything this style of acting is even less attractive as an LTR maintenance technique than as a pickup technique. It may not be so bad to act full of shit like this if all you want is to get laid, and all the other people you’re hitting on want is to get laid, and that’s tacitly understood by all. But if you cannot be fully emotionally open and honest with your life partner– if you cannot be fully yourself with her, but have to put on a face of “social dominance”– then you can’t be fully emotionally honest with anyone, ever, and that’s a terribly sad thing.

Oh go choke on your own self-righteous, high-minded solipsism.

The entire point I’ve been endeavoring to impart is that men shouldn’t “put up a front” or “be something they are not” or “act full of shit.”

The entire point is to BECOME A MAN SHE RESPECTS AND ADMIRES.

By catering to her, being subservient and supplicating, you CANNOT earn her respect, only her contempt.

Women NEVER respect men they can rule.

Instead of begging her to let me into her world, I now live to excel in my world, and she’s welcome to be a part of it.

It’s not an act. It’s not a front.

It’s a mindset.

A way of life.



One final thing to all:

Everything I wrote about at Roissy’s were my experiences before I ever heard of his blog.

Everything I studied and learned from was free resources on the internet regarding “dating advice” for men and other such things. Many of these sites no longer exist. One in particular, the Reality Method, was the real key in opening my eyes to social relationship dynamics.

When I began to comment at Roissy’s, I decided to simply contribute to the unique melting pot of ideas and personalities that his blog had attracted at that point in time. Men would constantly beg Roissy to give them advice on how to use “game” in the LTR’s they were in. Along with a few other commenters there, I helped to point those men towards the light of truth that I had discovered myself.

Much of the people I found to be in concordance with on many of the related topics that were such great discussions in Roissy’s commentary section are the same contributors and commenters over at the Spearhead now.

That is why I spend my time over there now, rather than Roissy’s so much anymore. I still read him every day, but don’t contribute hardly anymore commentary there.

24 comments:

Ferdinand Bardamu said...

Good work Dave. I encountered the PUA for LTR blog last month and took issue with its misleading and inaccurate name here:

http://www.inmalafide.com/2009/11/11/a-modest-request/

If you've read the novel Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, the book's protagonist makes a deal with the Devil in order to "take back" Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 - in other words, create a piece of music that is similar enough that it ruins the audience's ability to enjoy the original. The PUA for LTR blog reads like a failed attempt by Patri Friedman/Patrissimo to "take back" game from people like you, Roissy, and the rest of us. I say "failed" because in two months of operation, he could only get one contributor - a "life coach" who has no direct knowledge of how game works, and as you showed Dave, none of the commenters understand how game works either. Contrast this with The Spearhead, which had six authors on board when it launched and now has over a dozen, and where posts regularly get hundreds of comments.

I've got nothing against Friedman, but he should really leave this stuff to the pros.

Talleyrand said...

Beautiful.

"Mothers are feted on Mother’s Day in that church. All mothers are asked to stand amongst the congregation during the service, so that all the young men of the church can give them flowers in honor of being sacred mothers.

On Father’s day, the Preacher gets up and administers a harangue and excoriates Father’s for failing to make the sacrifices necessary to make their wives and their children happy."

I cannot count the number of churches I have seen do this. It seems almost universal.

CS said...

Good writeup Dave. Based on the commentary you were reacting to, it seems that you have a gift for attracting what I suspect are the well-intentioned, sexually-frustrated betas. At least that's what they appear like from your comments.

Their approach NEVER worked for me. Some men are indeed, not intended to be harsh but truthful, 'stuck on stupid' when it comes to relationships.

Or perhaps they are closet feminists. Regardless, your characterization of them as "fools" is true. They seem not to know 'up' from 'down'.

Patri Friedman said...

Ferdinand - I'm not trying to take back Game, just add a contribution. If anyone in the movement had a central point on game for LTRs, even a single column, I wouldn't have started the blog, but they have left the niche unfilled. If pro PUAs come on board and take over, or start their own superior competitors, I will be delighted. All I want is for people in long-term relationships to get the support of theories and examples from human sexual dynamics, as opposed to it just being used to help pathetic guys get laid.

I don't claim to be an expert, just a guy who knows a tiny bit of game, has a happy marriage, and is good at identifying low-hanging-fruit.

Dave - no problem with your being too busy, I totally understand. I waffled over starting PUA4LTR b/c I already write for so many blogs / have so much going on in my life. I encourage you to post about PUA in the context of LTR on your blog or on the Spearhead every now and then, and I'm happy to link to it. You are an inspiration to people like me who think that Game can be applied to being a husband and father, not just a player.

CMPitts said...

Awesome, awesome post Dave. Truly inspiring, and a kick in the ass to the blue-pills. Thanks for writing this!

Aaron said...

Good stuff. I think ultimately, "game" in the context of a LTR is nothing more or less than being a man. In the dating scene, it may be possible to fake it long enough to get laid. But in a long-term relationship, if you don't truly have a certain masculinity and confidence, it's going to show.

Almost every man, no matter how supplicating and tongue-tied he might be around women, has some area of his life where he's confident. The nerd who stutters and wets himself when a pretty girl talks to him may be the cockiest guy in his chess club or online gaming group. So for most guys, it's not about being something you're not; it's about taking the self that you are when you're confident and happy and extending that to the rest of your life.

You mentioned putting women on a pedestal. One revelation for me was when I realized a woman wants you to put her on a pedestal; she doesn't want you to put all women on a pedestal. In other words, she wants you to love her and do nice things for her because she's special and deserves them, not because she's got two X chromosomes. That's why they want to earn their way into your heart--something you don't have to earn must not be worth much.

You also mentioned misandrist churches. Since I've started going to a traditional Catholic church, I've been blown away by the difference. There are separate roles for men and women, and the women especially like it that way. These are strong, opinionated women, so it's not like they're just going along with domineering men. But the men are men and the women are women, and it's a huge contrast from so many modern churches (Catholic and otherwise) where women have taken over all the roles and the men are just along for the ride. It's pretty wild to hear a woman say, "The husband is the head of the household, and if mine isn't, I'm gonna kick his butt."

Anonymous said...

Dave, your story is much like mine, only my marriage didn't survive. I've learned these things since, though, and they transformed my relationships with both men and women. Men will often defer to me, and I notice that even young women will often give me looks that reveal interest, and I'm 56 freakin years old. I've been with a great woman now for almost 4 years, and our interactions are characterized by lots of negging banter, teasing, and slaps on the ass (she slaps mine, too). I refer to her as "My woman" to both men and women, and I love to look at their expressions when I do.

Don't let the idiots get you down, but somehow, I know you won't.

emarel

Deansdale said...

Never be disheartened. Guys who know what you're talking about or any guys with half a brain know you're cool. You helped tons of men become (better) patriarchs.
Thank You.

bear said...

I tip my glass to you sir and thank you for your posts.

I've been in a 25 year ltr and the first 20 years were all beta-beat-down. Five years ago I knew this wasn't right and started to figure it out. Not sure if the relationship will make it but I'm ready for that change in life.

Your posts were a huge help.

Cheers!!!

Anonymous said...

Don't bother about what other people think, Dave. I knew from the outset what your intention was: to help other people to have a better relationship with the women in their lives.

If somebody misinterpreted your posts about LTR Game is because stupid people consciously misinterpret things in order to follow their agendas.

I am really thankful for your posts. I have learned a lot. I am a foreign guy so your influence extends abroad.

Thank you, Dave.

Graham Phoenix said...

Some great stuff in there, although I have not read the post that got you going. I hate the term 'Alpha Male' and it's connatations of arrogance and exploitation. But we need a model of masculinity which is strong and powerful. We need to be strong and certain with our women, but that doesn't meant treating them like crap.

Kirt33 said...

except in my own case it was reinforced and magnified by a “Christian” church community that preached implicit misandry as a tenet of their religious doctrine.

Glad to see you put "Christian" in quotes - glad to see that you realize that those attitudes are not called for in the bible. (In fact, in previous centuries women were considered the tempters of men.)

mnl said...

Dave, I enjoy nearly all your posts on LTR issues--including this one. It's a shame that a few (and I believe it is just a few) have misconstrued what you're about. Please take heart that the number of relationships that you've helped likely dwarfs the number who have vocally misinterpreted your message.

You've described your awakening as like taking the "red pill". This Matrix metaphor makes complete sense. The red pill is an alternative mindset. It exists in a parallel reality to the "blue pill" of conventional relationship thought. But as an alternate view on the world, it's going to challenge the status quo. If you're doing it right, expressing your red-pill view is going to generate some heat. It has to.

At the risk of over-using Thomas Kuhn... the gulf that separates you from certain critics may have a parallel in Kuhn's description of "paradigm shifts" in the scientific community. That is, the blue-pill world of conventional, beta-ized, and misandrist relationship thought is one "theory" (the established one). The knowledge of LTR game is another (the alternate theory). The personal shift to the new theory (the red pill or LTR game) happens as follows: At some point along the bumpy road of blue-pill relationships, many men find "anomalies" for which blue-pill thought simply has no good explanation or solution. For example, a man asks himself while sleeping on the sofa one night after an argument with his wife/girlfriend, "I've done everything she asked for. Why is she so critical and not happy with me?" Or perhaps he finds himself standing in the check-out line with his wife at a fabric store on game day alternately feeling resentful for being there and guilty for feeling resentful. Above all, he wonders how the hell he got in such a whipped position in the first place. Or perhaps he confronts the very worst: "Why the hell did my wife just have a fling with that unemployed biker dude and is now threatening divorce? I've sacrificed so much for her." These anomalies (or hopefully ones much more mild!) cause a "crisis" of thought; they force a re-evaluation of the blue-pill relationship theory--a theory that fails to grasp the process of beta-ization.

The trouble is... as some men come to the realization that "game" or the "red pill" has a more sound explanation for crises like these, the status quo is threatened. As some men find the "red pill" not only explains all the above anomalies but enlightens their minds to far, far more as well, there's an "intellectual battle" (Kuhn's words) that takes place. Nevermind that LTR game is a much more useful way of viewing the world AND of getting what a guy wants AND of making his wife/girlfriend happier. Red-pill theory challenges the comfort zone of other men (and women). To a blue-pill guy, the possibility of red-pill veracity means that all one has trusted and relied upon previously about opposite sex relationships--all the pretty lies--are entirely bunk. This is mentally upsetting and even fear inducing. Therefore, the acceptance of the alternative (red-pill) view isn't at all instantaneous. The change will never be universal. The transition isn't one bit calm. Instead, the new theory provokes rhetorical and philosophical attacks from those challenged by it. In the scientific world Kuhn explains how these attacks happen using the somewhat polite discourse of academic journals and in the rarefied air of scientific conferences. By contrast, and in a blogosphere cloaked in Internet anonymity, the attacks against the new relationship paradigm are often ad hominem and more blunt--such as you're finding.

Again, maybe this rant is an overuse of Thomas Kuhn. But bottom line: if you're seeing opposition and mischaracterizations of your words, it means you're doing everything right!

. said...

HL,

Your stuff is all good, and I for one vote for you to receive a 10% raise in pay for your efforts!

Anonymous said...

You've helped many. Keep up the good work and ignore the naysayers.

Sincerely,
California Libertarian

Keoni Galt said...

Thanks to all for the support.

Rob, I agree....but is 10% of nothing better than nothing? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Keoni,

I read many of your posts at Roissy. This was after I realized with the assistance of my Econ. Prof. neighbor that I had changed from a lesser alpha to a beta after marriage(10 years in now). Anyway your postings were very timely and informative for me. My marriage is better now and my wife happier.I thank you for your efforts on behalf of males everywhere. Keep up the good work!!!
Puntblock5

G said...

Dave
Can I contact you in private.

Anonymous said...

Greetings!

Blogger is giving me a hard time about this post needing to be only 4096 characters and it's only 4087, so I'm giong to split it into two parts.

I am an alpha, and I made the same mistakes you discuss here, because that was the example I had to follow as I was growing up. It killed several marriages before I started reading people like John Alanis and realized that I was living my relationships very differently from how I lived the rest of my life.

I was a business consultant, accustomed to conducting group research through interviews and such, and gathered a large group of women to get the facts. They do in fact communicate differently from us, very indirect and diplomatic as opposed to the natural male tendency to be very direct, and each gender expects the other to behave as their own gender does. We found what REAL alpha male behavior is, and it is not the fiery, jealous, violent behavior of the leader of a dog pack. That's alpha dog behavior.
Human male behavior is simply being able to make decisions, motivate people, be confident and playful, flirting and patiently allowing a woman to enjoy her anticipation until she’s finally overwhelmed with desire and then taking charge of that situation in such a way that all are satisfied. It does not require that a man be a cave man or even close. It requires that a man assume his natural position of authority and not be ruled by his wife's hormonal swings, moodiness and drama; indeed, his biggest job as the male is to help her not get lost in those conditions and emotions by being playful, being decisive, helping her to climb out of the funk, etc. Those are things that any man can do, no matter how beta he is, as Dave found in his own life. Alpha characteristics are also natural to beta men to some degree, and as long as they don't just hand over their testicles to their wife, they can be quite attractive.

I read Neil Strauss's "The Game" out of curiosity. While I was appalled at the peacocking and other attention-getting devices and seeing the bar set so low that "closing" was defined as getting a phone number or a kiss (attention-getting and lowering the bar that terribly low are signs of terrible self-esteem, not a beta personality), I was fascinated at how some of them, like David D'Angelo, picked up on so much of the psychology. It's a shame that they lacked the confidence to use it properly, so that, as Strauss points out in the last paragraph or two of "The Game," that no form of closing is going to be good enough if you can't follow it up with a relationship when it eventually turns out that you've found someone you actually want to be with longer than a kiss or a night. THAT is when you have to know not only about women, but about MEN -- you MUST know what your natural state and station are as a man so that you can blow off all that misandrous programming that everyone from the mainstream media to our own parents have heaped on us since birth.

Continued...

Anonymous said...

...continuing...

That programming is powerful. The red pill/blue pill analogy is quite apropos, but not as mnl described it. The red pill represents reality, not an alternative mindset. There is only one reality, and the "blue pill" mindset for relationships is not one that works in reality. When a man swallows that red pill and purges all the wuss behavior that we have been taught to display, we quite naturally fall back into that role of the playful guy who leads his wife as she wants to be led instead of putting her on a pedestal and making both miserable.

This effect is so consistent and so profound that I make a living teaching men about it and helping them to shed that programming. Over the years I've been doing it I have seen some VERY beta men shed that programming and become quite enjoyable to be around. And while in a room full of males, they are usually still the ones standing aside and letting others be in charge, they're not doing so with an air of insecurity, but with an air of waiting for orders because they expect those in charge to be experts and organized, soldiers, not wimps and little boys on a playground. The way we behave and the place we hold in our homes and in our marriages carries over into all parts of our life.

David Cunningham,
makingherhappy.com

Anonymous said...

Your entire post illustrates for men with money, means, a career and options the reasons NOT to get married. Why should I have to engage in an elaborate game to placate a wife. It only shows you have no game even fewer options. I prefer variety and have the money and looks to afford it, which you don't.

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Anonymous said...

The haters are lacking in common sense. Your "Dave from Hawaii" essay has really helped me, my marriage, and my wife. THANK YOU!