in this post and this post i laid out a basic framework for a set of traits that approximate the idea of “alpha”, as pertaining to long-term relationships, graded from -10 to 10. as some readers pointed out, however, the term “alpha” has been bandied about so much that it inevitably causes confusion — so here’s another way to think about it: the idea of “alpha”, as proposed in this series, is strongly correlated with the notion of “yang” in the yin/yang dynamic, as articulated in chinese philosophy.
here are the eight such traits that have already been discussed.
alpha/yang trait 1: sexual dominance
alpha/yang trait 2: sexual aggression
alpha/yang trait 3: control the conversation
alpha/yang trait 4: all interaction is sexually charged
alpha/yang trait 5: authority
alpha/yang trait 6: independence
alpha/yang trait 7: dismissiveness
alpha/yang trait 8: comfort in own skin / ability to cause others to adapt
…and below i’ll discuss one more:
ALPHA/YANG TRAIT 9: INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN
-10 = in the event that other women are in sight, his every movement and gesture is an exaggerated, purposeful effort to look away from them — even if his woman is hundreds of miles away
-5 = completely ignores the sexual presence of other women if his own woman is present, as if neutered; can’t or won’t flirt or return flirtation, even completely innocently
0 = glances appreciatively at other women, but won’t interact with them, if his woman is present; may flirt briefly and innocently with other women in his woman’s absence, but with no intention of following through or progressing to the point of non-negligible sexual tension
+5 = engages and flirts playfully with other women, and has little shame about returning their flirtations, in his woman’s presence; normally keeps the tension playful and brief, but may occasionally escalate to the point where his woman feels disregarded or even purposely snubbed (a feeling that usually dissipates somewhat quickly). flirts aggressively with other women in her absence; normally able to control himself in such situations; never drives the final steps of an extracurricular dalliance himself, but may occasionally fall into the web of a particularly seductive interloper if their flirtation escalates too far
+10 = in social situations where other desirable women are present, uses his own woman almost solely a prop to attract more playmates, whether she’s ultimately to be included in those activities or not; in her absence, continues to seduce women as usual, mentioning his own woman/women only in order to evoke preselection and stir up other women’s jealous desires; brings other women home regularly, even if he lives with his woman/women, with no apology — just an invitation to join, or a harsh temporary dismissal — if she walks in on them in flagrante
and then there were nine.
what so often goes unnoticed, especially in discussions about shorter-term pickups (for which cutting one’s losses is hardly a big deal), is the notion that all yang and no yin makes jack a sociopathic boy. a successful relationship requires a viable balance of alpha (yang) and beta (yin) traits.
notice: “balance”.
the use of this word is not an accident. in fact, a greater degree of alpha (yang) should be paired with a likewise GREATER degree of beta (yin), and vice versa, in almost direct contravention of just about everything else that is stated in this little corner of the knowledge jungle.
—
to this end, then, a brief and slipshod attempt to define a few of the key beta (yin) traits.
BETA/YIN TRAIT 1: GENERAL AFFECTION
-10 = he doesn’t ever want to touch her with his own hands, look her in the face, or sit/stand directly facing her
-5 = he occasionally takes her hand, gives her small kisses, or touches her, usually at times dictated by standards of manners or decorum; no spontaneous displays of affection in public; very little eye contact, always brief when it does occur
0 = some spontaneous displays of affection in public, but usually in tritely “romantic” situations; any amorous gestures outside of such contexts occur only after several units of alcohol; more common, but still brief, eye contact
+5 = frequent bursts of public affection, often completely unexpected (and often unexpectedly passionate); prolonged eye contact on a regular basis; frequent touching in almost all situations that are not physically/situationally awkward
+10 = constant public displays of affection, regardless of whether she telegraphs awkwardness; staring into her eyes almost constantly, like a hungry dog latching onto a guest at a cookout; hands and/or arms in almost constant contact with her, even when physically or situationally awkward
note that “eye contact”, in the above, refers to the tender, loving form of eye contact — not to be confused with the “sexual predator stare” or with the stare of an angry disciplinarian / disappointed master
BETA/YIN TRAIT 2: MATERIAL PROVISION
-10 = he won’t give her a red cent (note that this is NOT the same as “he takes from her”)
-5 = he grudgingly pays the bare minimum
0 = he pays for things in accordance with his means, and well within his comfort zone; he doesn’t splurge on her unless HE also wants whatever he’s splurging on (e.g. plastic surgery, lingerie, slutty clothes, vacations that HE wants to go on)
+5 = he pays for her things slightly beyond his normal comfort zone — as much, or more than, for any of his previous women — but still well within his means
+10 = he buys her not only everything she wants, but also everything she says she wants and everything he thinks she might want, spending well above his actual means
two VERY important considerations for this slider.
1)
note that the above criteria are relative, not absolute, in two ways: (a) relative to the man’s means, and (b) relative to his comfort zone.
both of these are crucial.
the first is obvious — a weekend getaway in a $300/night hotel suite is clearly different to a middle-class man than to a rich man — but the second is underappreciated, especially in the PUA community.
specifically, if a man is dropping sizable amounts of cash, there’s a world of difference between doing so in an aloof, casual, unconcerned way, such that he is obviously calling the shots and her role as the beneficiary is almost incidental, and doing so in a conscious effort to please her or buy her affection. when men spend money on women, it should be mostly in the former way: she should not be the primary focus — even, ironically, when he’s buying things for her. if this sounds like a contradiction in terms — and i know it will, to any of you PUA types out there who follow ironclad rules and firm spending ceilings — consider the way in which a successful pimp or drug lord might pay for breast implants for one of his women. even though she’s clearly the recipient, she’s not the focus. he’s the focus, and she’s well aware that, if she weren’t there, he’d do the same for another, equally desirable woman without a second thought.
see the difference?
2)
the meaning of “splurge”, “bare minimum”, etc. is highly dependent upon the couple’s income disparity and/or living situation. the “bare minimum” for a sole breadwinner husband would be well within the range of “splurging” for a man who makes less than the woman does.
the next two traits generally sum up “empathy”, in terms of what is perceptible to the woman (since that’s all that matters here).
BETA/YIN TRAIT 3: INFLUENCE OF HER POINT OF VIEW
-10 = he never acts on her opinions/desires in any way; he favors his own random instincts even in matters he couldn’t care less about, or in her specialties about which he knows nothing
-5 = he rarely acts on her opinions/desires — almost never, excepting areas that are critically important to her and/or about which she has superior specialized knowledge; when he does, he does so at least somewhat grudgingly, and “keeps a scorecard”
0 = he normally acts according to whichever of their desires/opinions is stronger regarding the matter at hand; two equally strong opinions lead to endless dialogue/deliberation
+5 = he lets her guide most mundane decisions, but still takes the lead in matters about which he feels very strongly (note that this latter category intersects, but is not quite the same as, “matters he thinks are important”)
+10 = “yes, dear, whatever you say”; can hardly dress himself or choose menu items without her input; calls or texts for her constant input in the most mundane, unimportant matters
BETA/YIN TRAIT 4: ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HER POINT OF VIEW
-10 = completely oblivious to everything coming out of her mouth (note this is NOT the same as ignoring everything, which is a more stereotypically alpha trait)
-5 = sorry, what was that again?
0 = same level of acknowledgment that he’d give to same-status peers/friends
+5 = visibly interested in what she says, to a greater degree than with his same-status peers/friends, especially if she telegraphs via body language and intonation that it’s important to her
+10 = waits with bated breath on her every word, as though he were a goody-two-shoes grade-school student trying to earn a 100% participation grade
notice that neither of the above traits is equivalent to understanding her point of view, which is neither an alpha (yang) trait nor a beta (yin) trait. it all depends on what you do with that understanding.
BETA/YIN TRAIT 5: SEXUAL PASSION/AFFECTION
-10 = won’t even touch her with his own bare flesh (including his hands and unprotected cock); zero foreplay of any type (even verbal); won’t fuck her in face-to-face positions
-5 = sexes her mechanically, distantly, in a way roughly equivalent to how a prostitute would “service” a client (a run-of-the-mill prostitute, not one of the gifted dissimulators who can out-earn her looks fivefold by effectively faking passion and involvement); gets his rocks off and gets it over with; little or no eye contact
0 = kisses her, but not too deeply; touches her enough not to be a robot, but not really into emotional territory; too handsy/attentive for a woman who’s not in the mood, but would seem distant if she’s turned on; intermittent and brief eye contact
+5 = hands all over her body, including places neglected by most or all of her previous lovers; frequent deep kisses; prolonged eye contact, especially during orgasms
+10 = constant, cloyingly sweet eye contact; almost continuous attempts at kissing, even when extremely physically awkward; hands conducting relentless exhaustive searches of her body, treating even neutral zones like elbows and shins as though they were ultimate erogenous zones
BETA/YIN TRAIT 6: BUTTERING HER UP
-10 = familiarity has bred utter contempt; any feedback he gives her, ever, is wholly derisive and critical; he tells her she’s worthless deadweight, a constant force of friction slowing him down
-5 = he criticizes her more than he praises her; most of his compliments appear to come through clenched teeth, sounding insincere (in the “i don’t really mean it” way, not the cloying/overwrought way) or just rubbing her the wrong way; he comes off as resentful and passive-aggressive; negative comments come out of his mouth with a palpable “tip of the iceberg” feeling, as though he’s holding it all back to be civil
0 = balance of positive and negative feedback; occasional heartfelt compliments, though most positive feedback is somewhat mechanical, objective, and/or qualified; most negative feedback is objective and constructive, though he’ll occasionally get snippy with her in heated arguments or say something that comes off much worse than he’d intended
+5 = he follows the schoolteacher’s recipe of 3-5 positives for every one negative/constructive comment; his compliments are heartfelt and are decently well aimed at her feminine sensibilities; he occasionally gives honest criticism, but frames such criticism in extremely euphemistic, sugarcoated terms; takes the high road in arguments, never hitting below the belt unless she has seriously wronged him
+10 = he worships her as though she were a goddess, with total deference; no negative comments ever cross his lips; he apologizes and accepts blame for her wrongs, even her cold-blooded betrayals, reasoning that he just wasn’t being a good enough boy for her
note the fact — revolutionary to some — that this trait is not the opposite of dismissiveness (alpha trait 7). it’s perfectly possible follow the above schoolteacher’s recipe while remaining imperious and dismissive, but that takes a master’s touch.
BETA/YIN TRAIT 7: LOOKING THE OTHER WAY
-10 = he’ll go on a violent, uncontrolled rampage at the mere thought that she might look at another man — just look, even as just people-watching
-5 = he’s uncomfortable with her having any sort of contact, however brief, with other men, whether socially or professionally, even in large groups; if she has male friends, even harmless, neutered, sexually undesirable ones, he’s worried when she’s in their company
0 = he wouldn’t stand for her socializing with ex-boyfriends or ex-lovers under any circumstances, or with other high-status men one-on-one; if she has a night out with her girlfriends, he’ll check in with her and will be mildly distrustful; otherwise he trusts her around miscellaneous male company. he will accept. though grudgingly, a limited amount of her playful flirting with other men, but will call her on it if it is excessive, seems to be leading somewhere, or is blatantly dismissive of him
+5 = he has no problems with her socializing with other men, except those with whom he knows she’s had memorable sexual experiences; he doesn’t mind, and may even enjoy, her playful flirtation with other men, even when it’s somewhat sexually charged; he may forgive her cheating, once, provided she is never the sexual aggressor and has done nothing to engineer the situation
+10 = he encourages her to flirt with, fuck, and even have relationships with other men, on her own and of her own volition, sometimes right in front of his face
BETA/YIN TRAIT 8: EXPRESSIONS OF APPRECIATION (note that this is not the same thing as trait 6)
-10 = never utters a single word of appreciation, even if she saves his life or bails him out of jail
-5 = forced, trite, insincere mumblings of “i love you” at the conclusion of telephone calls or in other such rote situations, often with the same sort of internally seething resentment experienced by a seventh-grader whose mother insists on kissing him goodbye at the dropoff point on the first day of school
0 = mostly genuine expressions of “i love you”, “you look beautiful”, etc., but mostly in conventionally scripted situations (“you look beautiful” before sex, “i love you” after sex, either/both at formal events together, etc.); other forms of appreciation as immediate feedback (“i really like the way you _________ just now”)
+5 = “i love you” meaningfully and spontaneously, often at completely unexpected times and/or amid bustling public backdrops; “you’re hot” / “you look beautiful” / etc. whether she’s dressed to the nines or just to the one-thirds, mostly out of genuine appreciation but sometimes to lift her spirits on her bad days, but never to cloying excess; occasional spontaneous forms of random appreciation (“you know what i like about you? _________”)
+10 = “i love you”, “i’d kill myself without you”, “i’m nothing without you”, etc., frequently, randomly, and awkwardly, to extreme excess in both repetition and dramatic intensity; “you’re a goddess”, “you’re beautiful”, etc., to equivalent excess, even if she’s gotten disgustingly fat, slovenly, or skeletally skinny; cloying appreciation of other personality traits that she doesn’t even actually have (“you’re so good with the kids” when you had to pull them out of the pool, narrowly preventing them from drowning, because her drugs knocked her out)
BETA/YIN TRAIT 9: RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
-10 = he’s never done anything nice for anyone in his life
-5 = he’ll do ostensibly nice things for people, but only when he calculates (or miscalculates) that he’ll achieve some sort of personal gain in return, either as quid pro quo or by ingratiating himself to them — and sometimes not even then
0 = he’ll occasionally do things for his woman, and for close family and friends, without expecting equal reciprocation, but won’t inconvenience himself too much unless the situation is practically a matter of life and death; he’ll notice if there’s too much quid and not enough pro quo, and will cut ties with people who are all take and no give
+5 = he’ll consistently go out of his way for his woman, sometimes (but not usually) more than would be merited by the situation; he’ll give the shirt off his back for his best friends, and can be counted on for help by other friends in a bind; he’ll occasionally perform good turns for random strangers
+10 = he’s publicly demonstrative about doing “favors” for anyone and everyone in sight, whether they actually want/need his help or not, and regardless of their relationship, if any, with him; ironically, he is so helpful to random strangers that he diminishes the apparent value of his actually heartfelt favors to friends, family, and woman/women
there they are.
nine alpha/yang traits.
nine beta/yin traits.
—
and now, here’s the formula for a successful ltr, which is surprisingly and elegantly simple.
* calibrate the degree of alpha (yang) that your woman requires.
for high-drama, high-estrogen BPD sexual-dynamo femmes fatales, this number may be as high as +10.
for soft-spoken, modest, retiring church mice, this number may be as low as +4.
underestimate at your own risk.
* be as consistent as possible across the nine alpha (yang) traits.
as mentioned in previous postings, this rule will have exceptions in the cases of women for whom traumatic (or otherwise momentous) life events have knocked one or two of them off caliber.
* set the yin/beta traits at approximately 3/5 of the alpha/yang levels.
there’s the formula.
3/5.
that simple ratio expresses the essence of “contrast game” in three keystrokes.
it explains why the good deeds of alpha assholes count for so much more than the good doings of do-gooders.
it explains why overwrought, poetic expressions of breathless love are the stuff of women’s fantasies when they come from otherwise impassive, guarded, stoic, dominant sociopaths, and why the same words, spoken in the same way, become stalker nightmares from the mouth of a milquetoast.
it explains the resonance frequency of the push/pull dynamic.
it explains how you can make her feel, deep in her heart of hearts, that you know her better than she herself could, and that you satisfy her every urge, but still that she doesn’t control you in the least.
for the aforementioned high-drama, high-estrogen BPD sexual-dynamo femmes fatales, that’s +10 and +6 — welcome to bipolar manic-depressive high-drama highlowhighlowhighlowrollercoasterheavenhell.
for some of us, that’s the only thing that makes us feel alive. most such drama feeders are women; the lucky few men who can harness the storm, and who thrive on doing so, will have control of an endless parade of women who ruin more “stable” men’s lives for kicks.
for women who are traditional marriage material, it’s more like +5 and +3.
3/5.
as for money, status, worldly power, economic inequities, and fame, those are neither alpha nor beta traits, neither yin nor yang; they are simply wild cards that will allow relationships to survive longer with improperly tuned sliders. more on that later.
—
finally, the alpha traits should mostly be consistent, but the beta traits should not be consistent.
you should briefly tweak the beta traits in the negative direction, sometimes sharply (here the mixing board is an excellent literal analogy, in terms of throwing sliders to mix beats), to throw a little bit of syncopation into the relationship.
tweaking alpha sliders sharply in the positive direction can provide the same sort of syncopated beat, but most guys couldn’t much pull that off.
—
discuss.
2010/07/11 at 14:34
This looks like twenty or thirty years’ worth of relationship experience, distilled into three posts.
I like it.
Fuck that, this is the most brilliant piece of writing on long-term relationships that I’ve ever read.
2010/07/11 at 16:10
Beautiful.
Nothing to add to the knowledge, just a point on strategy of adoption.
I don’t want to be thinking in my head, “3/5.” Trying to constrain my behavior to a mathematical ratio would suck the joy out of life. I’d rather look at each relationship as a live mixing board. So while it’s the most elegant intellectual distillation, it’s not the most effective emotional perspective.
The whole model is better designed for analytical downtime. It has too many moving parts, in my opinion, to be mentally implemented all at once in real time.
2010/07/11 at 18:10
In the middle of reading this post, my husband spontaneously said, “I love you.” Made me smile.
I think it’s not really 3/5 beta/alpha ratio. It’s more of an ebb and flow, a rhythmic vacillation between the sliders.
Nobody can be consistent all the time.
2010/07/11 at 18:19
This is very good, but how does a woman assess what she needs?
Does she do the alpha assessment first, in isolation?
The difficulty is that when the beta sliders are factored in, what would otherwise be offputting heights of alphaness are mitigated somewhat.
2010/07/11 at 19:28
@Anonymous
Fuck that, this is the most brilliant piece of writing on long-term relationships that I’ve ever read.
I don’t want to be a gushing groupie, but credit where credit is due, this really is excellent.
[a groupie you aren’t; you’re more like a volcano, gushing and destroying in equal amounts]
2010/07/11 at 20:01
Narcisco,
[narciso, actually]
We have to talk. I have it in me to text this particular theory of yours. Experiment is what I like to do.
notice: “balance”.
the use of this word is not an accident. in fact, a greater degree of alpha (yang) should be paired with a likewise GREATER degree of beta (yin), and vice versa, in almost direct contravention of just about everything else that is stated in this little corner of the knowledge jungle.
This is an unusual elaboration on the limited skills that PUA teaches and encourages. It sounds like a seriously acute case of butt/shoe licking, and at this point NB’s shoes are awfully shiny, but this seems to be hitting on something.
Needs to be tested, is my consistent response. Gedanken experiments are fine. It needs real-world numbers. The hypothetical model needs to be examined and fleshed out.
@Koanic
The whole model is better designed for analytical downtime. It has too many moving parts, in my opinion, to be mentally implemented all at once in real time.
Yes, … it needs to be digested slowly over wine.
I’m tempted to write out a summary and explore its implications.
[sure. in particular, let me know whether you think the traits are consistent/congruent at the same numerical scores]
2010/07/11 at 20:15
Well done. Great set of posts.
2010/07/11 at 21:01
Timing is another issue.
Applying Cesar Millan’s philosophy to game, never reward with yang when she’s rebellious tetchy. That’s the time to apply alpha yin.
[ed: i believe you may have switched “yin” and “yang” here, unless i misunderstand]
Specifically, 6-8 for passive or 5 and 3 for active.
In the relationship the sliders must be balanced, yet in the moment certain sets must be emphasized as the situation requires.
Perhaps that’s why I don’t like internalizing the 3/5 rule for in-moment use.
2010/07/12 at 03:09
The whole model is better designed for analytical downtime.
yes. well, mostly.
the alpha/yang scales are absolutely designed for, as you’ve put it, “analytical downtime”. in fact, the issue is not that it would be too complicated, or too mechanical, to adjust them in real time — it’s that it’s actually impossible to do so.
you can definitely augment the degree of alpha/yang in your relationship, but you must do so gradually, so that the effect isn’t jarring, doesn’t seem fake, and will be an imperceptible (and therefore irresistible) influence on the woman’s perception of the relationship.
the idea, then, is that you throw away your ego, sit down, honestly assess yourself on each scale, decide which ones need improvement (calibrating also with respect to the woman’s particular history), and then take action.
note that “taking action” is not a fast process — it takes months at least, and years if you’ve had a longer relationship — because (a) it needs to be slow enough to be subconscious/imperceptible, and (b) YOU will
have to change, to the core, to alter these traits permanently. a charade can only be kept up for so long, especially if the charade has nine different aspects and is radically different from your current core personality.
you have to evolve, along with the mixing board.
2010/07/12 at 04:37
gorbachev #6 —
this stuff lies outside the domain of pua teachings because it lies outside the domain of pu in general; classical “pick-up” is conducted in such a short timeframe that (a) many of the traits discussed here are irrelevant or differently relevant — material provision, for instance, is radically different, with -10 being ideal for a one-night stand, and most of the other beta traits should run into negative scores if short flings are the goal — and (b) elaborate ruses and charades, which would inevitably unravel in a few weeks’ time, are long-lived enough to achieve the goal at hand.
Gedanken experiments are fine. It needs real-world numbers. The hypothetical model needs to be examined and fleshed out.
hypothetical it ain’t. it arises from a large sample size, both firsthand and secondhand.
but corroborative studies would be good, yes.
2010/07/12 at 05:05
3:5 or 5:3 is really close to the golden ratio of Hellenistic art and philosophy. (And the ratio doesn’t depend on the endpoints of your scales)
[wrong; if you use a scale of 0-20 or 0-10, or in fact any scale whose midpoint isn’t zero, then the ratios won’t be 3:5 anymore. in fact, a 3:5 ratio on my scales would transform into a variable, rather than a constant, ratio on any non-zero-midpoint scale. but, really? do we want to go there?]
2010/07/12 at 05:27
daedalus, #4
This is very good, but how does a woman assess what she needs?
Does she do the alpha assessment first, in isolation?
in keeping with the principle that men lead and women follow, such calibration on the part of the latter is unnecessary (and likely impossible for most women, given the considerations below).
as for the man, he knows that he’s dialed the yang up to the right degree when the shit tests have stopped.
the more shit tests, the more points up the scale our intrepid adventurer must ascend.
The difficulty is that when the beta sliders are factored in, what would otherwise be offputting heights of alphaness are mitigated somewhat.
well, sure.
the female mind has likely evolved to underestimate its need for alpha/yang and to overestimate its need for beta/yin, for the refreshingly simple reason that alpha (yang) comes to the woman by itself, while she is generally responsible for securing beta (yin) through her own primal bartering.
it’s the same reason that we humans underestimate the amount of, say, oxygen that we need (most people think you can survive in a sealed box, snowed-in vehicle, or cave-in for much, much longer than is actually the case) but overestimate the amount of food we need for basic metabolism (since we have to go get the food ourselves, unlike oxygen which accosts us as we lie there, and the consequences of oversatiety are much less pernicious than those of malnutrition).
2010/07/12 at 06:18
in keeping with the principle that men lead and women follow, such calibration on the part of the latter is unnecessary (and likely impossible for most women, given the considerations below).
I
2010/07/12 at 06:38
“[T]he man […] knows that he’s dialed the yang up to the right degree when the shit tests have stopped.” – narciso
Wilder’s reframing of shit tests as “alpha tests” makes more sense in this light:
“We’ve started calling shit tests, ‘Alpha Tests’… when a woman’s testing you, she wants to feel your masculine power.” – Wilder
http://www.bristollair.com/methods/more/wilder-interview.html#7
2010/07/12 at 07:03
Narciso at 12
In keeping with the principle that men lead and women follow, such calibration on the part of the latter is unnecessary (and likely impossible for most women, given the considerations below
You may be right, but it would probably be helpful too if women had a general understanding of what they needed (I appreciate the impossibility of fine-tuning a mixing board in the absence of actual music).
I don’t think this would necessarily damage the lead-follow dynamic too much, after all a true disciple would have to have some knowledge of the work of their leader in order to be such.
I suppose what I was really asking, personal considerations aside, is whether or not the test could (not necessarily should) be done the other way round, assess how much beta a woman can tolerate & then calculate the alpha factors required using your formula.
This could be dangerous in a new relationship because any hint of excess beta may cause the woman to turn tail & run.
In an LTR, however, a man might be able to immediately say, based on experience, what level of beta works best for his woman, and calculate the degree of alphaness from there, it might be a short cut?
Of course, it might also be completely disastrous for reasons I have not considered, but an answer on it would help in fully understanding your formula & how it works.
I have a further question, and that is whether or not most men can really cope in the long term with changing their personality for a woman to any huge extent.
I would suspect that for all men except the most versatile & determined, the alpha sliders can only be moved a little way up or down (I would suspect the beta sliders are more readily adjustable).
Accordingly, how on earth are most men going to maintain, in the long term, the +5 alpha that you say even a church mouse requires?
I appreciate that training from birth would probably do it, but I am talking not about the next generation, but about men who are already fully matured.
Given this fact, shouldn’t men be selecting women on the basis of, among other things, whether or not they are likely to be able to satisfy these women from point of view of alphaness (or indeed betaness, although beta traits are easier to adjust I would suspect that there are still limits in terms of comfortable adjustment).
Isn’t your test really something that ideally needs to be applied at the start of the selection process if at all possible?
And is it the case that some men just will never be able to reach sufficiently giddy heights of alphaness to maintain a decent relationship with most women?
On a separate note, I do think that you may not have met quite enough church mice, you may need to exchange war stories with Roissy on this.
There are a surprising number of high-oestrogen BPD femmes fatales in church circles, many of whom have affairs with priests & clergymen, I have a theory that in the past these women’s female ancestors were deliberately pushed in the way of religion to keep them under control, this explains the suprisingly high numbers involved.
This is a discussion for another day however.
2010/07/12 at 07:35
Yes, I always assumed the male went first in the yin yang dynamic, apparently not.
I am troubled by the slowness of the approach you’re advocating. Prior to being aware of your system, I have achieved instant (30 min – 2 hrs) relationship turnarounds by simply tweaking a set of sliders, specifically how I respond to shit tests or little emotional storms of dissatisfaction or whatever you want to call them.
(Yes I understand increasing the alpha can make shit tests go away completely. However I’m in tech startup mode and don’t want to make the lifestyle changes necessary to do so congruently yet.)
Now I agree that changing the core of a man would take much longer. However I’m not sure the tools presented here are sufficient to the challenge. They are diagnostic, to be sure, but not very prescriptive. Or, if taken as prescriptions, liable to produce ugly initial results, and with uncertain long term payoff.
As you have acknowledged elsewhere, all these BEHAVIORS point towards a MINDSET. Attempting to target and individually correct the behaviors generates an incorrect mindset.
Of course one can always correct a behavior here or there without compromising one’s core identity, but I am talking about making deliberate behavior correction the fulcrum for personality change. The result will be a mindset grounded wherever the fulcrum is placed, not one grounded at the lever’s intended destination.
A certain species of very grounded, rational and ego-less man could pull this off, but most will fail. What’s needed are indirect methods, such as joining boxing gyms, etc.
2010/07/12 at 07:45
sd
On a separate note, I do think that you may not have met quite enough church mice, you may need to exchange war stories with Roissy on this.
figurative language, my dear — it was the best image that came to mind, in the few seconds that i spent searching for one.
i know that what you’re saying is certainly the case in black baptist churches… oh my lord (pun entirely not intended).
on the other hand, i doubt that much of this is going on at the long island parish at which i attended spanish-language masses, a parish whose congregation was predominantly composed of male immigrant esquineros.
2010/07/12 at 08:25
[a groupie you aren’t; you’re more like a volcano, gushing and destroying in equal amounts]
Don’t be mean, I always do this to my favorite teachers.
Although I like deconstruction work, it’s actually very difficult to do much damage to your theories, I am genuinely very impressed.
Also, I would only try to pull someone’s theories apart if I thought they were smart enough & open-minded enough to enjoy my attempting to do so, it is a compliment.
2010/07/12 at 10:28
Also, it would appear from your formula that +10 yang and +6 (actually 6.something) yin are the maximum alpha/beta scores that any relationship can tolerate.
Accordingly, any more than +7 (rounding up)on the yin scale is incompatible with maintaining an LTR.
How then, Johnny, do you explain your own practice re. the beta/yin factor of Looking the Other Way?
As one doesn’t need Freudian levels of perception to work out that you are probably fairly close to the top of the scale on both counts, I’ll just extract +5 and +10 for this factor here:-
he has no problems with her socializing with other men, except those with whom he knows she’s had memorable sexual experiences; he doesn’t mind, and may even enjoy, her playful flirtation with other men, even when it’s somewhat sexually charged; he may forgive her cheating, once, provided she is never the sexual aggressor and has done nothing to engineer the situation
+10 = he encourages her to flirt with, fuck, and even have relationships with other men, on her own and of her own volition, sometimes right in front of his face
You’ve got nothing here about sharing out a woman for financial gain, you might want to put it in. In fairness, it’s not automatically incompatible with a +5 or +6-+7 I suppose, +10 is “of her own volition”, which is not quite the same thing, but you need to mention it given your previous discussion of the issue on my site.
PS: I really appreciated your masterful discussion of the 3-5 positives rule.
2010/07/12 at 11:41
john galt #14:
Wilder’s reframing of shit tests as “alpha tests” makes more sense in this light
i don’t really know much pua theory, but am i seriously the first person ever to put numerical scales to the behavioral traits upon which sexual dynamics are based?
the reason i’m so nonplussed is because i know that the pua community has been autistically obsessed with assigning numbers to the much more socially fluid idea of feminine beauty since its origins.
given that, it’s unbelievable to me (in the very literal sense of “unbelievable”) that no one has bothered to quantify the traits about which men can ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.
dear lord.
maybe i should appropriate some swpl pseudonym (so that i can sell to that demographic), publish an eBook, avoid adorning its cover with my dirty brown face, and sell it for some absurd amount of money.
heh.
2010/07/12 at 11:50
sd #15
You may be right, but it would probably be helpful too if women had a general understanding of what they needed (I appreciate the impossibility of fine-tuning a mixing board in the absence of actual music).
they often do, usually after they’ve reached an age at which the combination of experience and introspection (not even terribly deep introspection — this stuff ain’t rocket science, no really) starts to drown out the opposing combination of hormones and youth.
this is why, the echo-chamber bleating of posturing outsiders notwithstanding, my top choice for a bottom bitch — with whom i could have a more spiritually connected sexual experience, and to whom i could delegate a fair amount of the recruitment, mundane drama, and management of the younger girls who come in and out of my revolving doors — would, barring unusual open-mindedness, maturity, and managerial ability, be your age if not a little older.
i mentioned this no. 1 girl, who is doing quite swimmingly at 52.
2010/07/12 at 12:01
hope #3:
I think it’s not really 3/5 beta/alpha ratio. It’s more of an ebb and flow, a rhythmic vacillation between the sliders.
Nobody can be consistent all the time.
two things:
one, go back and read the last paragraph (before the one-word paragraph “discuss”), in which i made this exact point. but, yes, i agree.
or, in fact, you agree, since i wrote that paragraph first. heh.
two, what is the average ratio — the average ratio, so you can’t give a copout answer such as “it varies” — displayed by your husband in his interactions with you?
i’m betting that it’s pretty damned close to 3/5, although in your particular case (given the past experiences you’ve described) the numerator may be a little bigger.
2010/07/12 at 12:08
sd #15
I suppose what I was really asking, personal considerations aside, is whether or not the test could (not necessarily should) be done the other way round, assess how much beta a woman can tolerate & then calculate the alpha factors required using your formula.
This could be dangerous in a new relationship because any hint of excess beta may cause the woman to turn tail & run.
In an LTR, however, a man might be able to immediately say, based on experience, what level of beta works best for his woman, and calculate the degree of alphaness from there, it might be a short cut?
nope. won’t work. the alpha/yang is the invariant, with numbers that speak for themselves (this is why i defined them first — well, that and the fact that i thought of them first; i’ve actually been concocting this entire theory on the fly).
the beta numbers are not meaningful in and of themselves, so any attempt to define threshold beta values can’t be successful.
as proof of this fact, consider the behaviors marked +5 on the beta scales. (note that +5 is below the 3/5 value for an extremely intense alpha character, but above it for a more mellow, stable relationship.)
if these behaviors are paired with the +8/9/10 alpha traits, then they’ll all come off as breathlessly romantic; if they’re paired with the +3/4/5 alpha traits, they’re more likely to come across as try-hard, cloying, supplicatory, and (in the case of traits 1 and 5) a bit creepy/skeevy.
2010/07/12 at 12:30
I have a further question, and that is whether or not most men can really cope in the long term with changing their personality for a woman to any huge extent.
hahahaha darling, the men who need the most help from a system like mine are precisely the men who ALREADY “chang[e] their personality for a woman to [a] huge extent”.
think about the preternaturally extreme, histrionic supplication displayed by white-knighting chumps, vis-a-vis their incredibly self-important and passive-aggressive behavior when women are neither present nor involved.
this sort of dichotomy displays both (a) that personalities are more plastic than you’re giving credit for, and (b) the people who most need the help already have marvelously flexible personalities (most likely because they haven’t internalized any strongly held values) and are therefore good candidates for this sort of transformation.
—
I would suspect that for all men except the most versatile & determined, the alpha sliders can only be moved a little way up or down (I would suspect the beta sliders are more readily adjustable).
if this statement is indeed true, it’s only true because today’s environment is the one-two punch of (1) oppressive to masculinity in the upper classes and (2) prosperous and comfortable enough to allow that oppression.
my charges in the boxing gym — almost every single one of them — almost invariably grow, harden, and become more “alpha” as they progress, usually to a significant extent. although these boys are admittedly a self-selected bunch — they’re the ones who opt to join boxing at age 12-13 — i still don’t think they’re exclusively cut from the top few percentiles of the alpha flexibility scale.
rather, it’s simply the presence of compulsory challenges that forces them to grow and adapt.
in less pampered generations, i.e., all generations before X and Y, as well as current generations of lower-class immigrants, feel free to replace “for all men except the most versatile & determined” with “only for the most passive quartile of men”. maybe even the most passive decile.
or:
today’s “men” are pussies.
—
Accordingly, how on earth are most men going to maintain, in the long term, the +5 alpha that you say even a church mouse requires?
i really don’t think the +5 yang levels are much to ask, really in my heart of hearts i don’t.
but this is where my outsider status comes back to bite me in the ass; i really have no idea how much browbeating these boys are taking.
—
And is it the case that some men just will never be able to reach sufficiently giddy heights of alphaness to maintain a decent relationship with most women?
ahem, if it’s really the case that men aren’t allowed to be men in the workplace anymore, the least they can do is channel that masculinity into their relationships.
it’s hydraulic; it has to be vented somewhere. for the men who release their latent masculine tendencies in video games rather than in relationships, i have zero, if not negative, levels of sympathy. let ’em masturbate.
if men are no longer fighting world wars and no longer doing back-breaking labor all day long at work, then they should face increased formative challenges in their relationships.
men become men by overcoming challenges.
+5 is not asking much.
2010/07/12 at 12:32
You are great.
I have to go back to work now, but thanks.
2010/07/12 at 12:54
koanic #16
I am troubled by the slowness of the approach you’re advocating. Prior to being aware of your system, I have achieved instant (30 min – 2 hrs) relationship turnarounds by simply tweaking a set of sliders, specifically how I respond to shit tests or little emotional storms of dissatisfaction or whatever you want to call them.
oh, well, yeah, but those are stopgap measures. stopgap measures are not what i’m about.
you can also win one fight by using the element of surprise, even if you can’t normally fight your way out of a paper bag, but i’m the type who takes pleasure out of teaching the same boys to improve their fighting skills — and themselves — for periods of several years.
Now I agree that changing the core of a man would take much longer. However I’m not sure the tools presented here are sufficient to the challenge. They are diagnostic, to be sure, but not very prescriptive.
i’m not a fan of new-age jabbering in an inevitably futile attempt to reduce an intricate filigree of subtle, abstract strands (= a “mindset”).
whatever.
you’re right that i don’t attempt to describe the mindset, because i think “become the sort of man who would naturally do _______ and ______”, where the ______’s are the numbered items above, is already a sufficient description.
yes?
Or, if taken as prescriptions, liable to produce ugly initial results, and with uncertain long term payoff.
journey of 1000 miles, single step, etc., blah blah blah. you have to perform coarse adjustments before you perform fine adjustments.
what shell of a man doesn’t become expert in at least one thing at which he originally sucks?
what you’re describing is precisely what i was getting at in my first two paragraphs here. it’s a universally common initial state.
although your implicit point, which is that the “ugly initial results” could, in today’s insane environment, result in legal sanctions, is not lost on me.
i suppose it all falls under the umbrella of “high risk for high return”, huh.
As you have acknowledged elsewhere, all these BEHAVIORS point towards a MINDSET. Attempting to target and individually correct the behaviors generates an incorrect mindset.
the last statement is a necessary conclusion only if you have a complete inability to see 18 trees as a forest, or 18 separate traits as an interconnected family of traits.
i mean, i’m honestly trying to be indulgent here — i would think that most guys would THEMSELVES feel the lack of congruence between two sliders that were several points apart, unless they were on the autistic spectrum.
do you think that teaching boxing from a purely technical standpoint will necessarily lead to “an incorrect mindset” in young boxers?
since you mentioned a boxing gym as a counterexample, your answer is apparently “no”. why, then, do you view the boxing arena and the relationship arena as so fundamentally different?
Of course one can always correct a behavior here or there without compromising one’s core identity, but I am talking about making deliberate behavior correction the fulcrum for personality change. The result will be a mindset grounded wherever the fulcrum is placed, not one grounded at the lever’s intended destination.
well, yeah. that seems like basic common sense to me. (i’m not being patronizing here — this is a completely objective statement) however, you’re forgetting the importance of dreams/motivational goals.
i.e. there should be two fulcrums, not just one — a practical fulcrum (*), which is set one or two points ahead, but also a motivational fulcrum (**), which, contra what you’ve written here, is indeed “grounded at the lever’s intended destination”, if not a bit beyond.
this is not different from the dual aspirations of the 12-year-old fil-am boxer who, while simply training to throw a left hook without completely losing his balance (*), stares daily at the poster of manny pacquiao (**) on his wall.
2010/07/12 at 12:57
sd #18
Although I like deconstruction work, it’s actually very difficult to do much damage to your theories, I am genuinely very impressed.
Also, I would only try to pull someone’s theories apart if I thought they were smart enough & open-minded enough to enjoy my attempting to do so, it is a compliment.
yeah, well, apparently your backup plan is to air secret suspicions that i’m actually a woman.
but, in all seriousness re: pulling the theories apart — please do go ahead and try when you feel the urge, since most of these theories are the result of about ten minutes’ worth of serious thought. i’m sure there are rough patches.
2010/07/12 at 13:08
sd #19
Accordingly, any more than +7 (rounding up)on the yin scale is incompatible with maintaining an LTR
correct, schoolgirl. a quick study, you are.
such situations can be kept on life support by “wild cards” such as immense wealth, but things on life support are not generally flush with the red-blooded ardor of life, now, are they.
—
i like when you answer your own questions:
You’ve got nothing here about sharing out a woman for financial gain, you might want to put it in. In fairness, it’s not automatically incompatible with a +5 or +6-+7 I suppose, +10 is “of her own volition”, which is not quite the same thing, but you need to mention it given your previous discussion of the issue on my site.
that’s the answer to the question. i enjoy watching the flirtations of my women with lesser men, in the same way that a rich guy enjoys letting little boys sit in the driver’s seat of his ferrari (without the keys, of course) just to see the exuberant looks on their so-easily-pleased little faces.
capisce?
so that’s probably around +6/7.
as for the “of her own volition” part, oh hell no.
—
You’ve got nothing here about sharing out a woman for financial gain, you might want to put it in
nah. too culturally loaded and therefore too niche-relevant; i’m trying to stick to what seem like universal invariants here.
if i’m going to include that one, i may as well include ten other alpha sliders that are relevant to my own subculture, dealing with fighting, selling women, having connections within underground industries, etc. while that may be entertaining to readers here in a vicarious, almost voyeuristic sort of way, it would also completely undermine the real-life relevance of what is written here.
—
PS: I really appreciated your masterful discussion of the 3-5 positives rule.
i don’t see any “masterful discussion”.
instead, i see a brief discussion of certain first principles that are obvious (perhaps unconsciously) to anyone who spends enough time shaping the lives of strong-willed adolescents.
2010/07/12 at 13:09
yeah, well, apparently your backup plan is to air secret suspicions that i’m actually a woman.
A little bit tongue in cheek, maybe (I had actually forgotten about that comment).
But one never knows who exactly one is talking to on the internet. And you do appear to have a direct lead to the female hindbrain. As you know, I do have a tendency to presume the worst.
You make such a charming man, though, that I would be very disappointed if you (or indeed some other blog correspondents of mine) actually turned out to be women, it would destroy my hope that men can be attractive, intelligent and gentlemanly at the same time, I would just give up and die.
I myself am definitely female, but after the above I can hardly expect you to view this statement with absolute certainty, you will just have to take me at face value.
Thank you for allowing me to pull your theories apart, I genuinely find them interesting & I would love to be of some small help in this regard.
2010/07/12 at 13:22
And you do appear to have a direct lead to the female hindbrain.
perhaps, in the spirit of recent discussions in other corners of this sphere (yes, i understand that spheres don’t technically have corners), i should take this opportunity to propose that we close the borders of this discussion to men who don’t have at least some latin blood.
cause, you know, we peninsulares, criollos, and mulattos just have a higher emotional IQ than those darned white people, and we share more common stock with women.
heh.
hahaha.
it would destroy my hope that men can be attractive, intelligent and gentlemanly at the same time, I would just give up and die
who said i was attractive?
just like “good money, a good body, and lots of free time”, that appears to be a triad from which you get to pick at most two.
if you want to shoot yourself at this point, i’ll let you have at most two of a gun, a bullet, and the use of your hands.
2010/07/12 at 13:29
I myself am definitely female
darling, the “sibling” thing was obvious enough, but your femininity drips from every word, and every one of the seemingly random connections that suddenly create a whole when viewed from the proper perspective (think “magic eye” puzzles), in your deliciously cute run-on sentences.
it’s so obvious that i almost felt genuinely sorry for the dude who wrote “Isn’t that enough? Which side is more important to you -the woman or the career?” — why not ask whether the sun will rise in the east or in the west tomorrow — until i read the rest of his verbal diarrhea.
kids these days.
2010/07/12 at 14:02
He defined 18 different numerical scales, and then did mathematical modeling with them, so I think you can rest easy here. Unless there’s more than one of him.
2010/07/12 at 14:56
@Narciso 26
Well. We will see how it goes. You have never watched anyone attempt to implement your system from a beginner state. Nor have you, to my knowledge, observed ANYONE attempt to apply a PUA framework from a beginner state.
I’ve both observed it and done it myself. The results can be VERY messy. I think you overestimate male common sense, and the availability of comprehensively visible role models. I’m talking herky jerky. I’m talking journey of 1,000 years, not miles, because the journeyer keeps taking wrong exits and settling down.
The phase of incogruence due to self-conscious self-modification, is one I’ve seen guys never get past, and struggled with myself. The more sliders or behavioral metrics or moving parts you add to a system, the more overloaded these guys get. I struggled greatly with incongruence myself during my active sarging phase, partly due to the above and (less relevantly) partly because as an INTJ I genuinely had no desire for normal social interaction.
You have indeed described the theoretical framework for the mastery level of LTR game, or at least a major portion of it. I’m not so convinced that you’ve created a tool that will, on its own, open a path from beginner to mastery for the masses.
2010/07/12 at 15:11
“do you think that teaching boxing from a purely technical standpoint will necessarily lead to “an incorrect mindset” in young boxers?
since you mentioned a boxing gym as a counterexample, your answer is apparently “no”. why, then, do you view the boxing arena and the relationship arena as so fundamentally different?”
I’ll answer the direct questions posed here.
#1 I am sure it must not, since you teach boxing and wouldn’t have posed the question otherwise.
I’m not so sure I mentioned the boxing as a counterexample. I’d see it as a deliberate method of reaching a destination defined by your theoretical map. That’s a synergistic relationship.
#2 Several reasons. Mainly, most men will naturally find something pretty close to the proper mindset for an exchange of blows, especially if they spar a lot. The same is not as true of becoming a sexual alpha. Next, losing in boxing is no big deal when sparring, and practice is far less costly than it is in relationships. Presumably you want your system to work for men who don’t want to burn through a bunch of girls. Third, maybe it’s not that different. You can’t describe boxing in a few posts, give it to a novice, add time and get a champion. He needs a coach.
I think some guys will take this and do great with it, and others will blow themselves up. That’s no detraction from the accuracy of the observations.
2010/07/12 at 17:26
I tend to rush through the reading, so my apologies that I overlooked the last paragraph of this post.
I like 5 on beta traits, 0 on several alpha traits (particularly trait 2 and trait 9, due to my background and knowledge of my father’s cheating), and 5 on other alpha traits.
And yes, I do think 5 on alpha levels is difficult for many men. I am frankly surprised that
2010/07/12 at 18:30
Hmm. Lost my train of thought from earlier.
My husband is on average 4/5 or 5/5 with me, but he has shown flashes of alpha when he’s pissed off that basically ensure I never act out of line. Since I’m naturally submissive anyway, it’s only happened once.
He told me a story this morning (after I asked a silly question about why only men are called douchebags, when it’s a feminine hygiene product), that he once called a girl who was being bitchy a “used condom receptacle.”
This was, according to him, a good insult because it demeaned her to the status of “1) an inanimate object, 2) a disgusting object, and 3) a slut.” I said to him, “wow, you’re mean.” He shrugged. I said nothing further about it, resisting the urge to ask what she did.
The lesson to me (which I’ve already known, but renewed) was not to mess with him or treat him poorly, because he will certainly dish it back out. Again, I’m not the type to be testy or fiesty, so 99% of the time he refrains from using his sharp tongue on me.
So, he established (again) that he is not a doormat, and he won’t treat a woman nicely (or pretend to, at any rate) for merely possessing a vagina. Then later, as I was saying goodbye before he dropped me off at work, he pulled me to him, cupped my face so that I’m forced to look up at him, and kissed me several times.
Sometimes I wonder if I bore him because he doesn’t have many chances to unleash his wit on me. He gets a bit more animated when his mom comes over, because she also has a fierce tongue (presumably a trait he inherited), and they do some friendly verbal sparring. On the other hand, he never seems to want to call her on the phone.
When I ask him about that, he says he prefers that I’m sweet and loving, and he doesn’t want to be forced to keep me in line. He does have very different scores for some of his alpha traits, but it’s more to my liking to begin with, so he is not consistent (a word he has used to describe himself before in a different context).
Oh, and beta trait #7. I never flirt with other men, and I don’t even look, which he specifically mentions as a plus. He would never tolerate cheating. Not once, not ever.
2010/07/12 at 18:44
who said i was attractive?
Credit where credit is due, you have an attractive, intelligent and gentlemanly online personality.
You are at least as smart as Roissy but you are generally able to deal with people, particularly women, without being conciliatory or unpleasant, or indeed accidentally making them feel bad (so many men, even the nice ones, lack sensitivity in this regard).
This is not a particularly common skill amd it is a shame more men are not like this irl.
PS: lest this becomes too much of a love-in, might I add that your fishing for compliments here was fairly blatant.
2010/07/12 at 20:22
Seems that in our society at least, women usually prefer higher alpha slider settings on the physical attributes than on the verbal ones. The number of women who enjoy being strongly dominated in the bedroom is surely much greater than the number of those who enjoy being allowed to speak only when given permission. Also in many subcultures at least, women will seek & allow higher alpha in private spheres than in public ones/middle class women & above usually can’t afford to have their girlfriends see them interacting with husbands/boyfriends in ways that would be interpreted as “letting herself be pushed around.”
2010/07/12 at 20:35
Interesting that most of these beta traits are the ones that I dial back when I am not pleased with my woman, when she is acting like a dissatisfied bitch. I also move up the alpha sliders independence and dismissiveness.
After some time, her sweetness returns and I slowly move the beta sliders up for giving affection, appreciation, listening to her, asking her input, acts of kindness, letting her know where I am, etc.
Is this wrong of me or is this the right way to maintain the LTR?
2010/07/12 at 21:26
“Women usually prefer higher alpha slide settings on the physical attributes than on the verbal ones. The number of women who enjoy being strongly dominated in the bedroom is surely much greater than the number of those who enjoy being allowed to speak only when given permission.”
Psychological domination is often far more effective and much stronger than physical. A woman who has submitted to a man in her mind/heart would do a lot more for him than a woman who just gets slapped around and roughed up a bit.
You are right though. Most modern Western women do not think they want a high degree of psychological domination, because they want an extremely high (dangerously so) level of alpha before the psychological tricks are effective.
Also, something on the order of 70% of people are Sensing oriented on the Myers-Briggs spectrum. They go for physical stimulation over the other stuff, because that’s how they’re wired. Only 30% are iNtuitive, and I suspect many in the blogging world are N types.
2010/07/12 at 22:56
Hope I’m not saying that most or even that many women want to be “slapped around and roughed up a bit”, I don’t think that’s correct, only that most seem to want sliders set somewhere between 2-5 on the “sexual dominance” scale & 0-4 on the “sexual aggression” scale and definitely to avoid the Faberge Egg treatment. And the sliders set lower on “control the conversation” though not as much lower as I thought now that I reread the scales.
2010/07/12 at 23:45
koanic #33
I think you overestimate male common sense, and the availability of comprehensively visible role models.
perhaps. in any case, this is certainly where class differences come into the sharpest relief. my background is economically downtrodden but strongly family-oriented, hard-working, and intensely masculine, with no shortage of alpha role models for men.
in fact, most of the problems seen in men from my demographic result from a paucity that is exactly the opposite of the shortage that has created the PUA community.
specifically, the PUA/SWPL demographic (in my experience these are mostly one and the same) has been raised by a generation whose role models have had the yin dialed up too high and the yang dialed down too low. this demographic’s problems, not surprisingly, therefore revolve around the excessive, unchecked expression of beta traits — pedestalization, female dominance, feminism, political correctness, you name it.
my demographic has exactly the opposite problem: we were raised by a generation of role models whose yang is dialed up too high and could use an infusion of yin. again not surprisingly, i grew up in an atmosphere riven with domestic violence (the real kind, not the kind that is tried daily in DV courts), violent crime, naked power struggles, and the complete absence of long-term planning. (all of these are functions of excess yang, but the last is equally a function of having to worry about where the rent is going to come from.)
in fact, this is probably the single strongest argument in favor of the immigration that roissy and his acolytes so despise — the SWPL demographic can force us to beta up a little, if they want (since they hold the reins of power), but we dirty brown people can go quid pro quo with a few lessons in how to sack the fuck up and be MEN.
2010/07/12 at 23:55
more #33
The phase of incogruence due to self-conscious self-modification, is one I’ve seen guys never get past, and struggled with myself. The more sliders or behavioral metrics or moving parts you add to a system, the more overloaded these guys get. I struggled greatly with incongruence myself during my active sarging phase, partly due to the above and (less relevantly) partly because as an INTJ I genuinely had no desire for normal social interaction.
you’re also neglecting the fact that apparently nobody has ever bothered to quantify the different traits, as i’ve attempted to do in this series
as i’ve stated before, completely without exaggeration, this whole quantitative system is the result of a grand total of about 10 minutes of careful, nuanced thinking; moreover, while i do have a staggeringly large sample size, i’m hardly a genius IQ savant. therefore, it will probably always be a mystery to me why some other PUA dude never bothered to assign numbers to these traits.
i mean, what the fuck? imagine how hard it would be to locate a point on a three-dimensional coordinate system, let alone an eighteen-dimensional coordinate system, if the coordinates were not conveniently specified by numbers.
while i see your point, i think that a surprisingly large proportion of these people’s difficulties could be mitigated simply by my assignment of numbers to the relevant traits. i think the biggest reason these guys get overwhelmed is simply that they have no idea which traits need to be tweaked and which don’t, at any given point — especially because that is constantly changing — and also because they have no way of evaluating traits relative to each other, other than by completely ill-informed random guessing.
you yourself are the one who has rightly criticized having a “fulcrum” placed only at one’s ultimate goal, but, as far as i’ve seen, that is exactly what almost ALL pua literature does.
i’m enfp (again, my name is not “narciso” for no reason), so i’m not feeling you on that last part.
2010/07/13 at 00:05
koanic #34
Mainly, most men will naturally find something pretty close to the proper mindset for an exchange of blows, especially if they spar a lot. The same is not as true of becoming a sexual alpha.
i wouldn’t be so sure of that latter statement — i think there is some validity in advocating the use of prostitutes, for instance, for men who are extremely shy, insecure, or inexperienced regarding their sexuality. (for the record, i also think that this is absolutely the ONLY validity in such advocacy; the middle-aged men on these boards who are still spouting their “prostitutes are better than gfs/wives” rhetoric are pathetic omegas, regardless of their success, or lack thereof, in other areas of life.)
obviously, visiting a bunch of prostitutes for emotion-free “practice” will not make a man into a sexual alpha all by itself, but it could still have value. in fact, now that i think about it, fucking a few professionals bears exactly the same relationship to the sexual challenges of a LTR as does speed-bag practice to an actual boxing match: it ain’t gonna make you a winner, but at least it’ll give you some of the basic skills that you need not to get knocked right out of the ring.
Next, losing in boxing is no big deal when sparring, and practice is far less costly than it is in relationships. Presumably you want your system to work for men who don’t want to burn through a bunch of girls.
eh. i agree about 50%.
most of the disagreement is regarding the gravity of “burn[ing] through a bunch of girls”, which i don’t really see as such a huge problem.
2010/07/13 at 00:20
Hope
He told me a story this morning (after I asked a silly question about why only men are called douchebags, when it’s a feminine hygiene product), that he once called a girl who was being bitchy a “used condom receptacle.”
did he type that to you in a chat program, or something?
because that’s not an effective insult at all, if delivered to any woman who’s actually a woman, for two reasons.
1, if and when “slut”, etc. are used as insults to a woman’s face, they are almost invariably used by bitter, low-value men. therefore, this woman, in all likelihood, felt entirely validated in her bitchiness at that point. she almost certainly regarded the encounter as a small victory.
2, “receptacle”? really? sorry, but words have to be chosen more carefully than that to be effective, and, moreover, effective insults must be the most carefully chosen words of all — pithy, simple, and cutting. i hate to say it, but this is just all kinds of fail. i’m sure my other female readers can back me up on this one.
—
Sometimes I wonder if I bore him because he doesn’t have many chances to unleash his wit on me.
well, if that story is any indication, i certainly don’t doubt his lack of experience in the “witty badinage with women” department. sweet jumping jesus.
—
He gets a bit more animated when his mom comes over, because she also has a fierce tongue (presumably a trait he inherited), and they do some friendly verbal sparring. On the other hand, he never seems to want to call her on the phone.
child of divorce/separation?
domineering, controlling mother?
not many traditional male role models?
if the answers are yes, yes, and yes, then that would go a long way toward explaining a lot of the, uh, weirdness in your descriptions of this guy. but, also, if the answers are three yes’s, the good news is that he will probably be able to grow into a more confident leader with time.
—
When I ask him about that, he says he prefers that I’m sweet and loving, and he doesn’t want to be forced to keep me in line.
if your growing fetus is female, this shit is gonna have to change with a quickness.
just a friendly heads up.
2010/07/13 at 00:24
Oh, and beta trait #7. I never flirt with other men, and I don’t even look, which he specifically mentions as a plus.
you don’t even look? like, you’re the female equivalent of -10 on my alpha trait number nine?
if that’s the case, that doesn’t sound healthy — it sounds like you are bottling up some very hydraulic forces, which may well blow the cap right off if they build up and are then subjected to stress. yikes.
2010/07/13 at 00:35
daedalus #37
You are at least as smart as Roissy but you are generally able to deal with people, particularly women, without being conciliatory or unpleasant, or indeed accidentally making them feel bad (so many men, even the nice ones, lack sensitivity in this regard).
mostly, this is just the golden rule; women have always been, on balance, overwhelmingly good to me.
roissy’s measured snark can be entertaining, but, despite his fresh coat of smooth game, he still has quite a bit of difficulty masking the manifold layers of bitter resentment left beneath from his previous life (and prevented from evaporating by the new clear coat).
i also think this is the reason why so many men in power are surprisingly chivalric and indulgent toward women — men who achieve power tend to be natural alphas who have rarely, if ever, been abused or mistreated by women (other than their mothers and sisters, but that’s whole different ball of wax right there). i don’t doubt roissy’s success with women in a recent enough timeframe, but sticking a knife through the clearcoat reveals the same sort of nice-guy-syndrome bitterness evident in that flailing eunuch who posts on your blog (and roissy’s) as “tim”.
—
PS: lest this becomes too much of a love-in, might I add that your fishing for compliments here was fairly blatant.
wrong.
but, not surprising that you’re wrong here — i was temporarily forgetting that i was talking to a woman (something i would never forget, believe me, with a shining example of womanhood standing physically before my eyes), making the mistake of interpreting “attractive” in the purely physical sense. a model i am most certainly not, though my presence and intensity certainly pay the difference plus a little lagniappe.
2010/07/13 at 00:41
Of course you are right about the demographic divide, and I’m sure you also know which demographic will be reading this on the internet.
Actually, PUA literature does do a decent job in places of presenting a graduated incline from beginner to master. There’s a general recognition of the process. RSD is especially good, very advanced.
I agree, your system is a necessary theoretical advance.
No problem with anything your saying in 44. There’s a reason I put so many qualifications in. I still think it’s reasonable to say that men are better at naturally, effortlessly, instinctively arriving at a proper mental state for fisticuffs than LTRs.
2010/07/13 at 00:42
lagniappe
A word worth travelling to New Orleans to get.
Btw, Twain was not a fan of pale skin, as far as I remember. He thought it ugly.
2010/07/13 at 00:43
This is probably Narciso’s influence, Hope, but you two are beginning to remind me of the passive aggressive couple from Best in Show.
2010/07/13 at 00:47
iconoclast #38
Seems that in our society at least, women usually prefer higher alpha slider settings on the physical attributes than on the verbal ones. The number of women who enjoy being strongly dominated in the bedroom is surely much greater than the number of those who enjoy being allowed to speak only when given permission.
go back and read the descriptions again; are you sure you aren’t making the mistake of equating what is unequal?
“being allowed to speak only when given permission” is +10 on the verbal dominance scale, while “being strongly dominated in the bedroom” starts at +5.
also, you are as usual neglecting the fact that what women think they want, what women say they want, and what women actually want are, in most cases, three entirely different things.
in my experience, which, believe me, is extensive — i like to subdue particularly bitchy women in the same way that fishermen like to catch particularly large fish, if only to throw them back after taking a few photographs — women still like to be bested in conversation, just as they like to be bested in most other areas of life (barring traditionally female areas such as the care of small children — that is one area in which you don’t want to outshine your wife).
most women don’t place much value on “winning” an argument in any way that corresponds to winning a debate, and what little value they do place in rational debate tends to evaporate if a tête-à-tête gets heated (regardless of whether that’s a good “heated” or a bad “heated”). at that point, you have to win the argument woman-style — i.e., you can no longer dominate the argument to win over the woman; you have to dominate the woman to win the argument.
therefore, if you’ve got yourself an argumentative woman, you will find that the only way to gain and keep the upper hand in your verbal altercations is to follow my golden path of +5-plus in verbal dominance. also, you will find that the optimal level of such verbal dominance will, barring incidents of abuse, etc. in the woman’s past, be almost exactly parallel to the optimal level of sexual dominance.
2010/07/13 at 00:56
more iconoclast #38
Also in many subcultures at least, women will seek & allow higher alpha in private spheres than in public ones/middle class women & above usually can’t afford to have their girlfriends see them interacting with husbands/boyfriends in ways that would be interpreted as “letting herself be pushed around.”
well, as they say in many other subcultures, like, duh.
the implicit premise here seems to be that this is only true for verbal dominance, but you’re forgetting the supremely obvious fact that exactly the same phenomenon is seen in physical dominance.
you’re saying that bossy husbands don’t boss their wives around quite as much in mixed company. that’s obviously true, but it’s just as obviously true that physically dominant men don’t knock their women’s bodies around quite as much in mixed company, either.
ironically, i’ve already covered this — in fact, i’ve covered the EXACT degree by which the man in question will attenuate his dominant behavior in public. specifically, this is part of alpha/yang trait 8.
to quote the great brown philosopher narciso:
the +5 alpha tones it down a bit in mixed company; the +10 alpha couldn’t give a shit if he tried.
i like that my system explains even more things than i intended it to explain in the first place.
2010/07/13 at 00:58
flahute at #39
Interesting that most of these beta traits are the ones that I dial back when I am not pleased with my woman, when she is acting like a dissatisfied bitch. I also move up the alpha sliders independence and dismissiveness.
After some time, her sweetness returns and I slowly move the beta sliders up for giving affection, appreciation, listening to her, asking her input, acts of kindness, letting her know where I am, etc.
Is this wrong of me or is this the right way to maintain the LTR?
to the first approximation provided by a blog comment, yes, this sounds good. in fact, it’s a pretty good elaboration on what i wrote in the last paragraph of this post, all the way down there.
2010/07/13 at 01:19
“did he type that to you in a chat program, or something?”
No, he didn’t say it in chat. We talk face to face most of the time.
I think part of your confusion about him comes from a difference in class backgrounds. He comes from a traditional white middle to upper middle class background, in a place that (up until recently) is mostly white as well.
Also, the females you know probably didn’t grow up in Mormon central.
[haha. no.]
How much do you know of Mormons? They don’t drink, smoke, drink coffee, or use profanity.
[i’ve met my share; remember, vegas was founded as a mormon town, and some of those roots are still there.
of the mormons i’ve met (don’t they hate being called “mormons”? i seem to remember “lds” being the preferred title), most have retained a surprisingly high share of that pious character. however, i’ve met a few (ex-)mormon girls from utah and idaho who decided to pack their bags, move to vegas, and prove once and for all that being a bad girl isn’t so sinful after all. on the other hand, i’ve never once met an ex-mormon bad boy type.
i’ve actually met more mormon men who are samoan and tongan than white, although i don’t know enough about lds demographics to judge whether that’s weird.]
My husband is not a Mormon, but he has absorbed some of their culture. He once tried to show me the “ghetto” of this city (I lived in Chicago for almost ten years), and I asked, “This is a ghetto?”
[slc? boise?]
Remember that I lean very much toward the beta / nerd end of the female spectrum, therefore 80% of men are more “alpha” than me. My taste in men is also not like that of the average woman. For instance, I found Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club off-putting rather than hot, and the celebrity himself never appealed to me.
[ok. i don’t really know or care much about celebrities. however, the kind of women i’m used to would generally think little of a pretty boy like brad, although they would certainly pretend otherwise for a slice of his cash.]
“you don’t even look? like, you’re the female equivalent of -10 on my alpha trait number nine?”
There’s “looking” as in a casual glance to see who’s there, and there’s openly drooling and staring at a new guy. I don’t do the latter. No celebrity worship or bodybuilder worship or status worship. The only man I openly worship is my husband.
[bodybuilders are a niche market for women. when they’re in-season, they tend to scare away girls who aren’t in the fitness scene themselves. on the other hand, when they’re off-season and they balloon back up to bouncer size, they can pull some serious tail.
why “bodybuilder worship”? that’s a new one to me.]
I’m just not the kind of wife who gets off on checking out other guys or likes random male flirtation. When I first got with my husband I literally stared at him all the time. This evening I sneaked into the dressing room with him and watched him with total adoration and admiration as he tried on clothes. If you say that’s unhealthy, you’re entitled to that opinion, but I’m quite happy myself.
[nope — i said it would be unhealthy if you were the equivalent of the -10 score, i.e., making a point of averting your gaze from any male in the vicinity.]
Different strokes, different folks.
[i always thought it would make more sense to put “different strokes” second.]
2010/07/13 at 01:22
Comment 52 is an impressive response. This guy knows his shit.
Narciso, who are you?
If you came up with this in ten seconds, could you kindly spend your next ten seconds thinking about, say, prostate cancer or world hunger?
2010/07/13 at 01:34
Cancer: paleo diet. World hunger: colonialism.
2010/07/13 at 11:08
Koanic 56:
Now I understand your name.
Narciso 51:
I know where you got that catch-and-release image from.
[not this time, actually, though i know what you’re thinking]
The think they want-say they want-actually want triad deserves an extensive post of its own.
[that sounds like another “preface with a short story” post.]
2010/07/13 at 14:29
Narciso/Editor at #54,
Actually about 25% of all Tongans and Samoans are Mormon.
2010/07/14 at 03:10
Narcisco,
I would add another beta trait. It doubles up on some others, but there are certain situations that are very specific.
– endurance and sensitivity
Ability to endure emotional, personal and situational outburst from the female without appeasing
2010/07/14 at 06:33
@Poly
I very much doubt you do.
2010/07/14 at 12:51
gorb — interesting. i think i’ve got your meaning here, but maybe you could flesh it out with some descriptions for -10, -5, 0, 5, 10?
btw, only one “c” in narciso (actually a standard-issue hispanic name, fwiw).
also, i’m interested in how you’re going to experiment (in your words). i know you’re in a budding ltr — you talking about that one? you gonna tweak the sliders with her?
remember, a large part of my sample size here is negative space: in my frequent encounters with disaffected wives, i’ve tried to calibrate as exactly as possible the tipping point of their dissatisfaction — as i’ve written before, i’m like unit 731, doing bad things but using the results to ultimate benefit — and that’s where i got the 3/5 rule. interestingly, the wives of guys who were not beta enough also cheat a lot. ever seen a wife cheat with a less obviously alpha man who “makes her feel comfortable” or “just gets her”? um, yeah. that is a whole kettle of fish that is completely ignored in roissyville.
i know you’ve played around with a few married women in your day, too. did you feel out their own situations enough to calibrate on my scales, or were you too happy down there to really notice?
one thing i’ve consistently noticed is that, for all the laments of women’s dishonesty and lack of introspection, they are DAMNED honest about what leaves them feeling UNsatisfied. sometimes much more so than men, lemmetellya.
2010/07/14 at 13:50
Koanic,
I was referring to your abbreviated and powerful writing style. But if you’ve got another reason for being “koanic” that’s fine with me.
2010/07/14 at 17:26
“The wives of guys who were not beta enough also cheat a lot.”
Yeah, I believe that. I’ve been a big pusher of beta qualities, but most men say I’m just giving bad advice.
Alpha contrasted with beta is very potent. This is the nuclear combo that makes girls fall in love and stay in love.
Gorbachev, being unmoved by her mood is alpha, while sensitivity to her mood is beta. I think your descriptor belongs more in the alpha camp.
Again, the really potent combo is to be unmoved by her emotional outburst, be cold and aloof, then when she breaks down and apologizes for her bad behavior, go sensitive and comfort her, which diffuses the tension.
This only had to happen to me once or twice before I amped up self-control and never did outbursts again. This plus no nagging means we basically never fight.
2010/07/14 at 21:25
A lot of the beta “sliders” overlap with each other. The essential traits could have been captured with a lot fewer than nine. Also, some of the strong negative numbers on indicators are quite like the strong positive alpha indicators. this may reflect the difficulty of quantifying human traits which are inherently qualitative, but there’s a conceptual overlap, something that an econometric sort of curve-fitting for non-overlapping variables would sort out.
Of course that’s a subjective exercise, and johnny’s 10 minutes of thought came up with different variables from those that I or any other person might have.
3/5 ratio makes sense, but again, I sort of take issue with the idea that any of these traits are “actionable”, outside of extraordinary willpower or change in life circumstances. people’s personalities are basically set by the time they reach adulthood. so a major disconnect between any of the settings on these “sliders” is likely to lead to the person being perceived as off, odd, or a defective unit. moving the indicators up and down all the scales at once even harder see: my points in the other thread on “congruence”
again trying to shed light not heat, as ever. this is great stuff.
2010/07/17 at 11:47
maurice #64, emphasis mine:
3/5 ratio makes sense, but again, I sort of take issue with the idea that any of these traits are “actionable”, outside of extraordinary willpower or change in life circumstances.
yeah, but you’re actually making my point here.
any non-negligible, consistent movement of these sliders will absolutely and inevitably lead to “a change in life circumstances” for any man who is not completely absorbed in asocial activities. dare i say, using more of your words, an extraordinary such change.
this is life-changing stuff.
ironically, as i’ve told at least one commenter in private dialogue, the life-changing aspect for me was the exact opposite of what is required by most PUA types: i was actually losing women because i wasn’t beta enough in long-term relationships.
my ratio was more like 1/5, 0/5, or even negative, on all traits except #5 (helloooo latin blood).
this is almost certainly why i’m the first to really lay down these beta traits in quantitative form — i’m also one of the first for which those were the problem areas.
still, life-changing stuff.
2010/07/17 at 15:59
Dam wrote a whole post and it was lost to error statement when posted oh well.
But yea you talk about Roissy’s demons maybe with woman in the past.
””””’in fact, this is probably the single strongest argument in favor of the immigration that roissy and his acolytes so despise — the SWPL demographic can force us to beta up a little, if they want (since they hold the reins of power), but we dirty brown people can go quid pro quo with a few lessons in how to sack the fuck up and be MEN.
”””””
But you probably have some of your own. I usually like your comments but I don’t think you understand the diference between whites and lets say minorities but I would only really understand blacks.
I am one of a group of men who are in a diferent ideal of manhood. I have never seen it defined. Alpha sure they can be alpha but it is beyond that.
It can be tested at a young age. ie try to get them to do something that is against their internal morality and they will not do it. For me my test came in the form of my parents wanting me to do dishes. I told them it was womans work. My internal morality stated that my mom was not working therefore that was her fucking job not mine. I was not there to be a slave and be subjected to gross mistreatment. They beat me they yelled at me they made me stand there for hours and hours. They made me stand there for days. Those dishes did not get done. They would have had to kill me in the process of getting me to do it and those dishes would have been in the exact same fucking position. It was not that I was against helping the family or about my willingness to work. It was about in my mind it was unfair and not my responsibility. Later I helped quite a bit with the family business because that had value it made sense to help. Now that was also the last time my parents ever hit me.
I was probably ten years old.
2 adults on one child trying to break him. The parents lost the fight.
””””””’lessons in how to sack the fuck up and be MEN.”””””
Minorities have had not one thing to teach me about sacking the fuck up and being a man. This was in me at birth I believe.
So yea minorities tend to be flashy and talky talky about shit and they dance around and talk an extreme amount of shit. I have noticed though that when they encounter an actual man they become like bitches.
For instance look at the ufc you have a big black dude that beats up some white dudes. Look at how the white dudes even though they are getting the shit beat out of them do not internally give up the fight. The black dude is feeling great and is doing a good job of beating the shit out of the white guy. The white guy is becoming bloody and fucked up. The white guy is not giving up. Now you take that same black guy and he goes against someone who is obviously better than he is and he rolls over like a little girl ready to suck dick. If you watch ufc you will see what I mean. False bravado without an internal moral compass vs anything you throw at it.
So in fight to death I can believe that the white dudes who got beat by the black dudes in ufc would actually win because they never give up even against odds where it looks like they could not win.
I saw a video of two white dudes fighting in the sand on the beach. One dude was beating the shit out of the other dude sitting on his stomach just wailing on him until dude was knocked out. Then some more until he was tired and laid down. Then the other dude woke up and choked him what looked like to death. Who won the fight in the end?
Looks can be decieving.
Just like me dealing with all black why did I never recieve a beat down. I think because I didn’t fear it. I knew if it happened I was gonna track the shits down and dispense justice and I think they knew it too. So yea minorities tough and men as long as they are in the obvious powerfull position 5 on 1. Or much stronger than an opponent. Once it gets a little tough then they capitulate to the person who is toughs bitch it is actually disgusting to a real man to see this happen. Two real men can have a fight and have one lose but one of them ain’t gonna be ready to suck dick. From my experience a minority will be totally broken by the experience like a horse broken to saddle. Where the white real man can never be broken except in death. So this is the real reason why whites will continue to be strong they have a higher amount of these types of people. I think pretty rare obviously but I think in minorities extremely rare.
Like ok the odds are 30 to 1 against me. I don’t give a shit and walk out the door to meet them. I have done this. This is the power of the white man. So fuck off with your fake bravado and falsehoods.
Now I do like the fact that blacks seem to have no problem killing for no reason or stupid reasons innocent or the weak. But when the police who are not weak come to get them they placate like bitches on the norm and do not go out hard in contrast to there evil deeds. Hell I even wanted to die and was hoping the black myth was true and wore the blue and red and hoped they would do me a favor. I got knocked out for the only time in my life but I didn’t get killed. Now I went home and picked up my sks and was walking out door when my mom stopped me and threw some words that made sense to me. I mean really they didn’t attack me for no reason I was kind of looking for it and the reason I wanted to kill them was that they didn’t kill me so I was pissed that they didn’t live up to stereotype but did not have an offended morality of what was right and wrong I had to give them pass because it took so much to actually get a reaction like that.
2010/07/17 at 16:12
Or a real man has all the powers of a nation state or all the powers in the world in his own body and mind all by himself.
2010/07/17 at 16:51
You could put it this way: A real man cares more about his internal world than anything else.
2010/07/17 at 19:43
@narciso #65- true enough, life-changing. But your example is perhaps one of “extraordinary willpower” as I identified above- coupled, certainly, with extraordinary self-awareness. Sort of from the inside out. By extraordinary “change in life circumstances” I meant something external, from the outside in, that shakes up the internal compass/sliders. Something like a shattering divorce (what did it for me), major change in status/career, etc. By moving the sliders around, what you’re talking about is basically a personality transplant/transformation, after all, which is rare because it is so difficult.
2010/07/18 at 10:18
[…] Johnny Five – “To Whatever Self be True, Part 3: The Formula” […]
2010/07/21 at 14:48
It’s been clear to me in this series that you were favoring +5 alpha at least for LTRs with any stability to them. But pretty damn good for just pickup too. I kept seeing myself there, or sometimes slightly higher. +6 or something.
As for your 3/5 as much “beta” formula why not 1/2? btw what you describe as “beta” characteristics are really a lot better called “dad” ones. Security, comfort, etc. for the woman.
Anyway what you call “beta” is certainly not what Roissy does. His one dimension scale is all about gina tingle along, esp. when the girl isn’t in nesting mode, or really prioritizing LTR qualities. I’ve long said that isn’t adequate to really describe what attracts girls, especially for LTRs, and that separate cad and dad scales really would be better. That’s what you’ve done here, seems to me.
2010/07/21 at 14:51
Also I think you rather overemphasis consistency in alpha traits, as you’ve broken them out. Wild inconsistency would be a problem, yes, but probably not so common either. However perfect consistency, all coming in at precisely 6 or 7 doesn’t add much, I don’t think.
2010/12/30 at 11:39
as for money, status, worldly power, economic inequities, and fame, those are neither alpha nor beta traits, neither yin nor yang; they are simply wild cards that will allow relationships to survive longer with improperly tuned sliders. more on that later.
My intuition is the opposite ie. that DHV is significant in a relationship. Think of women who lose respect for their husbands after his socio-economic fortunes change dramatically. Or to put it differently, a man’s public social dominance is one of the “alpha/yang sliders”. He might walk the walk and talk the talk but in an LTR he also needs to be doing something of external significance. A slacker (even with a trust fund and with the other “sliders” calibrated) probably will be a turnoff for a lot of women over 25.
2011/07/06 at 09:01
[…] Babaero writes that a healthy relationship requires a 3/5 ratio of beta/alpha traits. Despite my many disabilities, I had one advantage over Sam – I grew up in a stable, loving […]
2011/07/07 at 04:26
[…] and how they managed and mismanaged long-term relationships. He links to another blog which talks about balancing alpha and beta traits to maintain an LTR. (This isn’t unique to this blog, Athol Kay talks about this all the time, […]
2011/07/08 at 16:06
[…] and how they managed and mismanaged long-term relationships. He links to another blog which talks about balancing alpha and beta traits to maintain an LTR. (This isn’t unique to this blog, Athol Kay talks about this all the time, […]
2012/05/16 at 22:26
Great breakdown, I haven’t read the preceding posts but this one is very easy to understand.
2014/08/15 at 21:36
of course like your web site however you need to test the spelling on quite a few of your
posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and
I to find it very bothersome to tell the truth however I’ll surely
come back again.
2015/09/14 at 16:38
Best of the three due to balance.
Alpha consistent
Beta rarely