Dread-Locked

Dread.  It’s one of the more difficult aspects of Game for those who want to believe that there’s something more to this whole inter-sexual dynamic thing than hormonal cycles and biological imperatives.  I don’t dispute that it works, but I can tell I’m not alone in that although I know it’s true, I still kind of wish it wasn’t.  Or more precisely, maybe it works, but do I really have to use it?  Did my grandfather really have to worry about this crap?

He probably didn’t, but you do.

Let’s examine Rollo’s Cardinal Rule of Relationships:

In any relationship, the person with the most power is the one who needs the other the least.

Fine, but then how the hell did relationships last a hundred years ago when we never heard about great-grandpa leaving great-grandma in the middle of a cornfield somewhere, giving her a few hours to “think it over” before he trotted by on his horse and gave her a ride home when she was cold, wet, and terrified?

One reason is that we weren’t particularly likely to hear about it, for this isn’t the type of thing that great-grandma shares with her twenty-odd grandchildren and great-grandchildren around the fireplace on Christmas morning.  Nor were the writers of the day likely to remark on it when it happened in romance novels.

But still, as true as Rollo’s Rule may be, it’s really hard to believe that it’s always been this way, that’s it’s always been this bad.

And that’s because it wasn’t.

Hyper-Hypergamy

In olden days of yore, even beta males were Alpha by today’s standards.  Yet even those who weren’t particularly Alpha were still able to maintain a similar frame in that they were still “the one who needs the other the least.”

Back then, she depended on him for income, today she’s got “You-Go-Girlism.”  If she was caught cheating on him then, society would frown upon her en masse; today he gets blamed for not adequately getting in touch with her emotional needs.  There were fewer opportunities to cheat (the logistics of cheating is easier to navigate in small towns today than it was in big cities in prior eras), no Facebook to remind her how special she is every two minutes, no movie stars or professional athletes for her husband to not measure up to, and no political movements telling her she had a right to make beta males she’s never met pay for her kids independence.  She was more likely to attend church, and in church she was more likely to be reminded of her duties as a wife.

So unless her husband was a hapless omega, he didn’t need to provide much dread because everyone and everything else was doing it for him.  There was far more dread associated with hooking up with the wrong guy and getting pregnant back then than there is associated with getting caught in the act by her husband today.

In fact, PUA’s in prior eras used to actively lessen the prospect of dread by using over-the-top promises of eternal love that would utterly flop today.  Just read or watch Dangerous Liaisons (the movie’s great, book’s better) and you’ll see countless examples.

Women had the same hypergamic instincts they do today, but far more dread to counter it.  If a woman in other eras pulled this crap, he wouldn’t need a week-long freeze-out, he could probably just tell her parents, or the preacher, or any of her friends, and she’d be ruined.

Today, it’s the complete opposite.  If the vast majority of Americans heard the anecdote I cite in the previous paragraph, they would be horrified.  If instead of running back into his arms she banged the plumber, she would hear infinite choruses of “you go girl!” (including many from her church, if she even attends one).

It’s a bit deterministic for my taste, but Roosh largely nails it when he describes The True Nature of Women:  Water takes the shape of the container it fills.  The container for the modern woman is the perpetual reminder that she can do better, that her feelings matter more than anyone else’s, that she has the right to have children with whomsoever she chooses and somebody else has to fit the bill, that men are idiots if they don’t find her attractive, that she has the right to quash the God-given liberties of any who might offend her, that she has the right to make it as tempting as humanly possible for a male to have his way with her but bears no responsibility at all if things go awry, that it’s perfectly okay for her to cheat on her husband.

Where I differ with Roosh is that I believe that although a substantial portion of a woman’s “container” is determined by her hormones, upbringing, environment, and other external factors, she’s not just some empty vessel that floats with the wind.  Her choices also matter, there’s a little voice inside of her that sometimes tells her things that the Hamster doesn’t want to hear, and it’s her job to listen to it.

Still, even the most loyal of wives, the sweetest and most feminine single girls, virgins and whores alike all have their hypergamic tendencies reinforced countless times almost every day.  It’s hard for us to not look down one chick’s shirt when she bends over.  If it happens fifty times a day, you’re gonna catch a few glimpses.

So, regardless of how right a guy may be when he tells women to stop shit-testing, it’s not going to happen:

“[Her] grandma had the same urges, but contrary to your ilk she easily got it under control.”

But her grandma also had about four hundred reasons to get it under control that women today don’t have,  including societal sanctions against shit-testing instead of in favor of it, churches that didn’t automatically take the woman’s side, a legal system that didn’t give her undue leverage, Facebook posts telling her she’s the cat’s ass dozens of times every day, etc.

Nevertheless, even if the modern can’t stop it, she can “[get] it under control”, although it won’t be “easy”, and she’s going to have to limit herself when she’s not even around her man if she wants to control it.  She might have to go to the gas station with the frumpy old Indian dude instead of the one with the amateur body-builder.  She’s got to want to succeed, desperately.

Still, even though men don’t have the backup they should have, we’re NOT powerless.  We have the ability to be as Alpha as we know how, we can learn Game and how to apply it, and we know how to shut down her tests.  The better women will have fewer than the shrews we need to leave behind, but all of them are going to have a least a few.

But if it ever gets too much, we’ve got something she’ll never be able to counter.  As men, we have a Weapon that’s infinitely more effective than any culture or legal system.

And we have to be willing to use it.