The Orbital Leapfrog

Athol shines the spotlight on one of his commenters concerning the humiliating experience of orbiting:

I got into someone's orbit, once, back in the Blue Pill days. I did all sorts of things for her, treated her nicely, waited patiently while she ended a relationship, undertook a lot of responsibilities for her. And then, at a critical moment, I made my Move. She was shocked. She was offended. She rejected me good and hard, told me that we would only be friends at best, that "I wasn't her type." She was kind of brutal about it, as if the very idea of me dating "out of my class" was ludicrous.

So I walked away. I quit calling her. I found distraction. I quit answering her calls. I got angry with her, then objectified her, and I completely severed any ties with her. Since we had a common group of friends (we were undergraduates) the group ended up shattering when I quit attending functions, and our friends wanted to know why. She blamed me for getting mad, blamed me for upsetting the group and starting a fight with her friends, and blamed me that I wouldn't "just be friends" and keep coming to her study group.

And you know what? I survived. Not only survived, it was the first real taste of "red pill" I'd ever had.

Now, to be fair, I have seen orbiting work on occasion. But it requires an insane amount of patience and the opportunity cost is monstrous. In the case of one of my friends, it took him most of our college years, three, in fact, to land the pretty Italian dancer around whom he had been orbiting. So, while he did manage to outkick his coverage, in the end, the relationship lasted about one-third as long as the orbiting. That's far from the most effective use of a young man's prime predation years, in my opinion.

Orbiting happens when a man with lower SMV locks onto a woman with higher SMV. Gammas, particularly nerds, are especially susceptible to this sort of behavior due to their social ineptness and overly romantic natures. Their natural tendencies towards pedestalization and singular focus are exacerbated by the messages they receive from the entertainment media, female friends of the woman they are orbiting, and the woman herself. It's important to remember that women being orbited enjoy the experience, as it not only makes her feel attractive but increases her status among other women. Women consider attractiveness to be much more nebulous and subjective than men do, which is why they instinctively feel that a woman with a collection of orbiters must be more attractive than the exact same woman without them. The female instinct to attract and maintain orbiters is no weaker or less valid than the male instinct to assemble and maintain a stable.

The irony is that by orbiting a woman, the orbiter tends to reduce the probability that he will ever become sexually involved with her. But this doesn't mean his cause is hopeless. The optimal strategy for a lower SMV man infatuated with a higher SMV woman can be described as the Orbital Leapfrog. The results are by no means guaranteed, but they are much more likely and come with a much lower opportunity cost. The Orbital Leapfrog requires a likely orbiter to refuse to show the otherwise orbited object any sexual interest at all while simultaneously pursuing her less attractive friends with enthusiasm and vigor. This will usually be perceived as an insult and a provocative challenge by the higher SMV woman; if the non-orbiter is successful in scoring one or more of her friends whose SMV is closest to her in her social circle, in most cases, he will not have to make The Move because the object of his real interest will sooner or later make a move on him. Then it's a simple matter of closing the deal, preferably in a manner that doesn't restore her to a place on her previous pedestal, in which case the triumph will be a very short-lived one.

This is, of course, a rather cold strategy that can be more than a little harsh on the women being leapfrogged. But again, I don't make the rules of human behavior, I merely observe them and comment upon what appears to work and what does not. And while the Orbital Leapfrog approach will not be successful with women who genuinely put their female friendships before their egos or their interest in men, that is a sufficiently small percentage of the female population that it will be unlikely to hinder the successful application of this strategy.

And by the way, Athol is correct. Orbiters never understand the phrase "no, it's not ever going to happen" unless it is spelled out very clearly and somewhat harshly for them. One single, gentle, "let's just be friends" is not going to overcome a decade of chick flicks and "you just hang in there, champ, and eventually she'll see what a great guy you are" talks from dozens of men and women. But I am dubious that most women who are orbited actually want their orbiters to go away, as I suspect they just want to keep them safely orbiting without either breaking free or making The Move.(1)

So, don't orbit. Don't ever orbit. You may not be sufficiently alpha to maintain your own stable, but that doesn't mean you have to be a pathetic little orbiter wasting years mooning uselessly over the same unattainable woman either.


(1) Note that the capitalization of this term is a dead giveaway of the former orbiter's gamma status. Can you even imagine an alpha talking about "The Move" when he might quite reasonably make more than one move an evening... and do so successfully?