What do you do when what you thought was a sure thing decides to play the game for keeps? A reader bemoans,
I fucked up. HB5.5 in my residency program wanted to fuck during orientation (last year). I brushed it off. However, I didn’t realize that this is fucking SF and the girls here are terrible. Got drunk with some other residents, gave her a call and said I wanted to bang. She’s playing it cool….too cool because I thought I was doing her a favor by throwing her a bone. Not sure if she over wanting the dick or playing hard to get. Cannot think of a respectable way out of this one, especially since word could get out to the rest of the group. In this particular group, reputation and status are extremely important. I don’t really care if I lose face with her.
HB 5.5. This is veering dangerously close to plain jane with stalker potential territory. The truly ugly girls know they don’t have a shot, and don’t bother obsessing over a crumb of attention they know isn’t going to materialize into a full man sandwich. But those girls who are right on the cusp of attractiveness — the 5.5s, for example — they can spin a smattering of alpha male attention into a fantasy world of romantic delusion.
Anyhow, lemme just quickly explain what’s going on this girl’s head. She knows from past experience your interest level isn’t high, and your recent motivation is drink and (probably) a dry spell. But her attraction for you is still strong, so she’s erecting a false bravado (aka female coyness) to ease her anti-slut conscience and maybe allow her the luxury of imagining she can raise your buying temperature by making you chase her a little.
You can play this game and achieve the bang by simply demonstrating some attainability that wasn’t there before, but that means a few dates with a 5.5 that will feel like wasted hours of your life once you’ve Jackson Pollacked her crevice. Also, you’ve got to keep in mind that your drunken pleading for sex lowered your relative value. The fastest way to give a girl hand is to confess in a moment of truth serum-y weakness that you need to get laid with her. So now you’ve got to tango with her like you would with a better looking woman, simply because you constructed a history with her that did your SMV no good.
If you want a way out, bang or no bang, my advice is to stop looking for a way out. Instead, ignore her and take some time off from what sounds like a very insular group to meet out-group women. The best ways out are sometimes found through ways into new women.
******
Reader #2 wishes to entertain us all.
hey this is a poem i just wrote.
I read your site diligently.
So here it is. Let me know what you think.
Here are the musings.
Of a sane man.
Argue they-n man
Large oracular, spectacular
vernacular. With back to her.
See me smackin’ her.
Take that from herI am a cool, guy
Lost not frost. Shocked
we’re not talked.
there once was a lad named heartiste
whose rod was as wide as its reach
the throngs they be mirin
the panties retirin
and the wombs did accede to the breach
– excerpt from “Plato’s Republic”
******
The Rude Word of Game will infiltrate every kind of relationship, as reader #3 testifies,
Hello Heartiste,
I’m a 21 year old male who took the red pill a year ago. Recently, I have started trying to spread the teachings to family and friends who I think would be the most receptive, and have even gotten my (lifelong favorite) uncle on board with smashing the Cathedral.
However, my mother is very different, and I’m not sure what to do about her. She’s a perfect candidate for postmarital spinsterhood. She’s 41. She is fit and healthy, but aging has obviously not benefited her looks. She divorced from my father (her initiation) 6 years ago. She works at an investment firm, in what is essentially human resources. She lives alone in her own house and has it ornamented with typical feminine feel-good kitsch, such as the sign that says “Somewhere someone is looking for exactly what you have to offer.” Yes, it makes me die a little bit inside too.
Based on snippets of her own personal life that she’s told me, I have made the unsurprising inference, considering her post-Wall status, that she finds herself in an unsatisfactory dating situation; all the men she dates are either not attractive to her or, if attractive, they won’t give her the time of day. I understand what is obviously going on but that she isn’t going to see, being steeped in Eat Pray Love go-get-em grrrl culture as she is since her birth. An apt illustration: I saw that she had purchased Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In for her woman’s book club.
As she is my own mother, and despite it being more or less just desserts for divorcing my father (who is, we might say, embarrassingly beta), I am still troubled that she’s floundering in this situation, under the delusion that she stands a good chance of nabbing a man that both cares about her and she finds attractive. It is likely only a matter of time before she happens upon the manosphere (I blog under my own name, and I cover red pill topics) and sees what is to be said about her situation. My questions are these: How can I let her know about her situation? What can I do if/when she finds out, and especially if it occurs through my own writings? What can I expect for how this will change our relationship or my relationship with my family in general?
Call me old-fashioned, but I think referring to your mother and the wall in the same sentence is bad form. I guess that’s the kinder, gentler, thousand points of love Heartiste talking.
Your mother is in desperate straits, and is grasping for ego-assuaging platitudes as is the wont of the weaker, sheltered sex when their fading beauty betrays them to the mercy of an obtrusive, cruel sexual market reality. If she’s reading that vile trash “Lean In”, then she’s too far gone to benefit from the cleansing power of realtalk.
To your pertinent questions:
Are you really going to inform your mother that she’s a sexual has-been who must learn to settle if she ever wants to be with a man again? True or not, I’m guessing you don’t have the psychopathic stones to do that to her. However, CH does! So if she comes across this blog post, perhaps a light bulb will flicker and, allowing for a few weeks of tear-dreanched pillow theatrics and longing stares at pill bottles, will rouse herself to acceptance of inalterable circumstance and tackle with renewed seriousness a search for men who are reasonably within her sphere of SMV synchronization.
Buuuut I wouldn’t hold my breath. Settling is not something that comes easily to women, at any age.
Your mission, should you choose to inject it, is deliberate avoidance of any kind of feelgood pablum that will put a band-aid on your mom’s psychic wounds but leave them festering underneath. Your refusal to console her should be a loud enough message to her that you don’t suffer her unjustified entitlement gladly. If her best interest is really in your heart, use family and friends lifelines to locate and instigate liaisons between your mom and older, beta gentlemen she might reject under her past dating protocol but are in fact good matches for her according to universal laws of romantic compatibility. It sounds like your mom desires a bit of the ol’ funtime badboy, so if you know a man, late 50s to 60ish, with a heart of gold who rides motorcycles and has been in a brawl or two, he might be your winning ticket. Be warned you may have to dip down into the prole classes to find this man, given the effete state of SWPL-class men these days.
******
Email #4 comes from a girly girl,
I love your blog, even though it makes me wince sometimes (I’m a girl—I suppose the truth hurts). You probably don’t bother giving advice to women,
Untrue. A foul calumny!
but I’m compelled to try anyway because the female oriented relationship blogs are so awful.
True. A factual calumny.
I don’t know where else to go. Earlier this year I was involved with this guy from my hometown for a few months. I would see him when I went to visit my parents. He is a very alpha guy and I got attached to him fast. He eventually broke it off saying he didn’t want a LTR.
The three month mark is typically the hour of doom when alpha males uninterested in getting tied down break it off with girls.
When I told him I would likely be moving back to my hometown permanently (for job reasons, not for him) he said, great.. when you’re back we’ll see where we are. I was a little hurt but I could see where he was coming from.
Aloof asshole off the starboard bow.
We’ve been keeping in touch by text since then, pretty much daily.
How long are his texts? Be honest.
Occasional phone calls. He is a classic alpha texter, infuriatingly short responses, careless spelling and punctuation, randomly drops out of conversations. Seriously, you could put him up on your blog as an example of alpha texting.
I should have read ahead!
Except for one thing– he will initiate if he hasn’t heard from me. I am not a crazy girl text terrorist, and when he goes off radar I’m pretty good at leaving him alone, but I always get the “what’s going on” text from him in a day or two if he hasn’t heard from me.
This is a good sign. He’s thinking about you. Or, less charitably, he doesn’t have another girl in his life to distract him.
He’s not into sexual banter but he likes to tease me about nonsexual things (I’m a klutz, I’m too gullible, etc.).
Cooties game.
He’s told me some surprisingly personal stuff too.
So I am moving back home next week and I just heard (not from him) that he’s seeing someone now. I’m so sad about this. I am crazy attracted to this guy and I know it sounds stupid, but I feel like we got a little closer through our “text friendship” these last few months.
It’s not stupid. As a human being, you project your sensibilities onto the opposite sex. As a woman, you value emotional connection more than sexual connection. So “text friendships” naturally mean a lot more to you than they do to him. But this deep state knowledge means you no longer have an excuse to persist in your happy delusions. You have to look reality square, and adjust accordingly.
I really like him. I want to start seeing him for real after I move…. and I was hoping he wanted that too. My friends say he’s already rejected me for a RL and if I want to revive things I have to go no-contact for a while so he misses me.
Your friends are on the right track, even if their reasoning is flawed. Better still, start seeing other men, and make sure it hits the grapevine. This radio silence strategy won’t work as well for you as it would for a man, but it will work a little.
They say I was too available, even if it was by text… this is the classic female-blogger “rules” advice, as you probably know.
It’s not your availability that was the problem; it’s the OTHER WOMAN’s availability that’s the problem.
So I have a couple questions, and I know you’ll give me the truth: (1) Can I assume he’s still somewhat interested, since he stayed in touch?
Yes, but it’s a threadbare assumption. If the other girl is better looking (tough pill to swallow for you, I know, but you have to face up to this possibility if you want a way forward), then his interest has plummeted because he’s getting what he wants. Not much you can do under that circumstance unless you’re down for a casual sideshow fling, or by some miracle the other girl turns out to be a psycho and he begins to miss your comparatively calming presence. Many men will keep up contact with past flames because they are practicing the age-old tactic of hedging their bets. See: Poon Commandment VII.
(2) Would being aloof and unavailable have ANY effect at all here, particularly if he’s seeing someone?
Probably not, if the looks differential between you and the other woman is significant. If, however, you and the other girl are equally pretty, then a disappearing act punctuated by occasional tacit reminders of your allure might help keep his interest at a slow burn.
Would anything help?
Dress hot when you’re around him. Be seen getting hit on by other men. Get in better shape (if there’s room for improvement). Fire up the rumor mill that you’re seeing someone. Master the feminine art of ambiguity (an art co-opted by male seducers) and curtness in your texts and conversations with him; don’t be nasty, be inscrutable. Be nice, but be taciturn, even business-like. You want him thinking you have options, and that you may be exercising those options, and that his company, while pleasing, doesn’t rock your world like it used to.
This is the best advice I can give you, and I give it with the warning that you shouldn’t expect much. The nature of male and female sexual dynamics precludes the possibility that the advice which works so well for men will work equally well for women. And another warning: Even should the advice “work” — that is, the other girl splits with him and he tumbles into bed with you — know that you will be second-best in his eyes if the other girl inspired harder, longer, thicker boners in him. I hate to get crude with such an earnest woman as yourself, but it’s necessary to illuminate the foundation of muck that supports the dreamy romantic idylls we all have a penchant for building around our egos.
If it matters, you can assume I’m hotter than the girl he’s seeing and that he does have a reputation for being playerish– although he has had several long term relationships.
I will take your word. If this is so, my advice above should work quite well. You may want to signal a little more attainability than what I have implied above, if you are really a better specimen than his current lover. Given his player predilection, he should respond reflexively to girl game that stings his narcissism.
We’re about the same on the attractiveness scale; we both have options.
Is this attractiveness scale a looks-based one? If so, you should understand that men are judged by more criteria than their looks. If he’s a player, he’s charming. And the ladies love a charming rascal. So although you have punched in the numbers and run an algorithm that tells you his looks and your looks roughly match, the romantic reality can be skewed in his favor and to the benefit of raising his value above yours because his charm and mannerism can net him attention from higher value women that his looks alone can’t (at least for any kind of relationship longer than a night).
I know you’re busy and must get a million emails, but any advice or commentary would be really appreciated. Thanks!
One final thought. Some men, particularly those seeking long-term relationships, will settle for women a little less hot than what those men could get, or have historically gotten, in part as a defense mechanism against getting dumped or getting drama, in part because they perceive a slightly less physically intimidating woman a better bet as a loyal partner in long-time love. If this is the operative psychology in your scenario, then he may have, to borrow a well-worn and extremely irritating phrase from platitude-land, “moved on”.
Or: The dude might be in love. Best leave him to his happiness.
[crypto-donation-box]
