What this long discussion really boils down to is tolerance for (or liking for) conflict. Vox is very comfortable with conflict, downright enjoys it sometimes. You are less comfortable.This relates directly to something I observed long before I first became aware of Game articulated as such. Men tend to worry about going too far in the direction they don't have to worry about. As a young man of high socio-sexual status, I often worried about the potential consequences of being too nice, which was of no little amusement to my friends who were accustomed to dealing with the aftereffects of my thoughtlessness and casual cruelty.
And women instantly know this about you when you say something like "I'm not interested in your opinion on that subject." That's why Stingray says, correctly, "Most women will smell your additional phrase for what it is. Fear."
So why do you say, "it has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with respect"? Because, like almost every man who isn't near the top of the sociosexual hierarchy (that's 99% of us), your behaviors that follow from that fear have become habit, and you've built up decades of justifications for them. So you don't notice the fear any more; you say it has "everything to do with respect."
Well, no it doesn't. Some of it is respect, but most of it is your aversion to conflict. You've repressed most of your knowledge of this fact. I know this because it's true of most men, including me.
I think that the single biggest (though not the only) determinant of our places in the sociosexual hierarchy is aversion to conflict. Alphas and sigmas have little aversion and often seek out conflict. (After a lifetime of this, they're pretty good at winning those conflicts too.) The rest of us have various degrees of fear, but we usually justify it to ourselves as being polite, respectful, "good men", etc. It's more comfortable to rationalize one's own behavior than seek a higher place in the hierarchy. But women aren't fooled; they read these signals instinctively and instantly know our places in the hierarchy. You aren't aware of the signal you're sending, but they sure are.
As an exercise, I would suggest you try saying things like "I am not interested in your opinion" and other "disrespectful" things that "may go a little too far." While you're doing it, pay attention to your emotions while you're saying it. It will open your eyes to what keeps deltas delta.
Meanwhile, one of my best friends, who is the sort of man who would be proud to labor seven years for the hand of a woman of whom he has only heard a description, constantly worried about whether he was being too hard on women by only laying down his coat over puddles rather than getting down in the mud and letting them actually tread upon his body. He would return from a trip with gifts, not only for his girlfriend, but for her siblings as well, then submit tamely to a tongue-lashing, apologize, and go buy a replacement if he happened to get a size wrong.
This sort of thing was a typical conversation between us:
Him: "So, do you think it would be too much if I ask her to pay me back for the first thing I bought her sister?"
Me: "The first thing? Wait, you bought a SECOND gift for her SISTER?"
Him: "Well, yeah, I had to since the size of the first one was wrong."
Me: "And let me guess, she ended up keeping the first one for herself."
Him: "Sure, because it fit her and I couldn't take it back anyhow."
Me: "Forget the money, I think you ought to just fuck her sister and move on."
So, based on your understanding of Game, guess which man was repeatedly trampled and treated badly by the women he dated. And guess which man was usually treated like a delicate piece of blown Venetian glass?
The more a woman understands you are fully prepared for conflict in the relationship, the less willing she is to initiate it with you. This doesn't mean you have to live on edge or be a preemptive jackass, only that when she decides to test your borders, you make it clear that you are entirely willing to defend them.
The advice of the Roman military strategist Vegetius is as sound for men in relationships as it is for nations: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
17 comments:
Men tend to worry about going too far in the direction they don't have to worry about.
So true. A good rule of thumb: if you're worried that you're going too far, you're not.
To apply that to Crowhill's concerns from that last thread: if you're the kind of guy who worries that a few words stated calmly might be too mean, then you're the kind of guy who's so far from being "mean" that you could err considerably in the direction of "mean" without getting close to what she thinks of as the norm from other guys, especially any "bad boys." If you're that kind of guy, you could simply set your tongue free and say everything that comes to your mind, no matter how terrible it sounds to you, and still be on the nice side of the line.
A for-instance: when I first discovered Game and was exploring its potential, I got to a point where I would bluntly ask a girl, maybe 15 minutes into our first conversation, something like, "Spit or swallow?" Now, how the hell is that not presumptuous and insulting? Any woman with the slightest self-respect (or even pretense to any) would immediately hang up on such a man, right? Well, not so much; all I ever got was giggles and an acceleration of the flirting. So a line that, to me the Nice Guy, seemed like it was going shockingly too far, was just adding a bit of spice to the conversation for them.
And this is different than Alphas avoiding Alphas due to the stakes, because they do so not out of the fear of emotion, but out of the rational assessment of the situation.Yet, this only be their rationalization?
What about in situations like: if after leaving the coffee shop, I notice that I've been slyly given less $10 less in change than I should have been... the cashier likely pulled a fast one. My wife will freak out, want to go back, and go crazy. I brush it off. Who gives a fuck about $10 bucks? In the time it takes to bitch the girl out, I could have made $10 bucks. And really, the girl is merely going to cry plausible deniability.
Am I being conflict avoidant or do I really not care? When does one know when the rationalizations are gone?
When does one know when the rationalizations are gone?
When you stop worrying about it and just do.
~ Stingray
Stingray,
Ha. Of course. I was missing the obvious. Thank you.
Am I being conflict avoidant or do I really not care?
It totally depends upon you. If you're going back because you're afraid of your wife being upset, yes, you're being conflict-avoidant. If you're NOT going back because you're afraid of upsetting the barista, yes, you're being conflict-avoidant.
If you're just doing what you want, you're not being conflict-avoidant.
This doesn't mean you have to live on edge or be a preemptive jackass, only that when she decides to test your borders, you make it clear that you are entirely willing to defend them.
I agree completely with that.
Would fear be one of the attraction triggers? It being the reason why dominance and raw masculinity is so important. Might be why patriarchy worked so well and for so long. Women do like to be emotionally oppressed, it makes them happy.
Men have fight or flight, women have tears and playing nice (light form of stockholm syndrom which explains why it's mostly women who suffer from this affliction) when faced with a dangerous situation. Everyone here has read about "The bridge" experiment or the fact that a good date is one which gets her heart pounding (rollercaoster, horror flick).
Creating some unease will get you laid, defusing it by playing nice or adding superfluous words will get you a kiss on the cheek. The best example would be to consider her reaction to a cute kid or a puppy, you'll never be as cute but always as unlaid as them. You'll get a lot of attention and comfort but zero attraction. Attraction and seduction is in the fear.
Before I got married, I always figured that a woman was worth no more than the next. The longest a dated one was 6 weeks. If the relationship didn't show promise, kill it early. With the millions of women in the world, until you are married who gives a shit.
If a woman won't treat you with respect when you are dating, it'll only get worse after you're married. Bitches are a dime a dozen (probably an overstatement of their value, my apologies).
Excellent. This is one of the more important articles I've read here. Of course, these lessons apply to the political world, too.
The more understanding you are, the more you have to "understand."
Meanwhile, one of my best friends, who is the sort of man who would be proud to labor seven years for the hand of a woman of whom he has only heard a description, constantly worried about whether he was being too hard on women by only laying down his coat over puddles rather than getting down in the mud and letting them actually tread upon his body.
I wonder what this fellow's sociosexual rank would be. Normally I'd say gamma, but if he managed to become friends with Vox, maybe low delta instead.
I say that because as my Game started to improve, over time I found first lambdas, then gammas, too annoying to want to have anything to do with.
Corvinus, there is some element of truth to that, however as you embrace your inner alpha more, you'll find that even your gamma friends annoy you less. Why?
Because as you establish dominance and unshakeable frame in your social contexts, THEY begin to conform to you while in your presence. Although lambda drama queens probably wouldn't, but I've never tested out that one.
@JCclimber
That would be true for deltas, and even omegas (if we have an interest in common), but I find gammas start to ignore me instead. New gammas I meet are either indifferent to me or quite hostile, especially when drunk. They can be entertaining sometimes... in a way.
GG,
A delicate piece of Venetian blown glass as in VALUABLE OR PRICELESS. Not fragile.
I read the phrase "conflict-avoidant" without any of the necessary qualification the expression necessarily requires.
Conflict always involves costs. In the context of this discussion, a man's willingness to engage in conflict is always tempered by the willingness of others to oppose him (and others are always willing to oppose him). Human society generally is constructed around the urge to constrain the individual's impulse to engage in conflict with fellow society members. More specifically, regardless of relative physical capability people are willing (in many circumstances, encouraged) to call upon the services of those society has designated as its enforcers to confront other people for them. Women are famously callous in their willingness to outright manipulate social codes to engage in conflict with others (not always men) by proxy.
Avoidance of conflict is necessarily a considered judgement of the cost/benefit ratio to the individual man making the decision. Failure to do so more or less directly correlates to the man's degree of sanity, in my opinion. Should someone choose to misinterpret that decision in their judgement of myself, that too is subject to its own cost/benefit analysis - upon occasion, quite spontaneously and emphatically when the calculation works out that way.
Yeah...that's what civilization needs. A little more respect for women. Just a tiny bit more, and we'll cross that finish line.
I know! One man, one vote - One woman, two votes!
You know. I case she changes her mind. Much respect.
Boundaries and borders, to have meaning, must be non-negotiable. Some men seem to delight in provoking a boundary-dispute in order to demonstrate their ability to defend or extend their borders. (Putin: Georgia, Ukraine.) (Or a guy who says hello by asking, "Spit or swallow?") Others respond to probing actions with unholy, astonishing enforcement (Reagan, Libya bombing). (Or a guy who puts down the paper and says, "Apologize now, and don't ever talk to me that way again.") It appears that Ray Rice is in the Reagan camp, but unwisely loaded nukes onto the F-111, and blew himself out of the sky.
Looking at this out of the sexual context, one can reasonably ask if the boundary-dispute-provoking approach is wisely used by people who strap an AR on their backs and go shopping for Pampers at Target -- because they *can*, you know, and they're just demonstrating that they *can*. Is it conflict-avoidant to maintain one's option to shop at Target with a visible long gun, but not actually provoke Target into making the practice against the rules? Sometimes, demanding attention -- saying, "look at me!" I'm demonstrating my agency! -- destroys the real value of the option to enforce. Or, nobody fucked with Reagan, but since Obama's abandoned "red line" in Syria, everybody laughs at US threats of enforcement.
--BV
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