After spending some time with men and women around these parts, I amconvinced that the primary cause of unhappiness in marriages is this:
The vast majority of married women are married to men who are less attractive, (or to whom they are less attracted) than the men they used to sleep with.
There are two real causes here.
Unattractive Men
There is a large glut of unattractive men in today’s society. They exist because (1) they’ve been specifically taught and lied to over the past couple of generations about what is and is not attractive; and (2) most have little to no incentive to be anything else. These men have been taught specifically that being nice, supplicating, pedestalizing and obsequious are attractive to women, and that women love men who have these traits. They’ve been told that their own looks, physical appearances and physical conditioning don’t matter at
all to women. And men get even more demoralized and disincentivized when they discover that being those things doesn’t work, and everyone around them has been flat out lying to them.
Going back a little further, there are a lot of reasons for this. Women (and some men) complained about boys and young men being sexually assertive, i.e. seeing a girl he likes and going after her. This is what we used to call “normal sexual behavior”.
A boy sees a girl he likes and runs his best game on her. This is now decried as abusive, deceptive, fraudulent and manipulative. Or a boy sees a girl he likes and perhaps pinches her derriere in high school, or sneaks a kiss. The alarms sound, because this is sexual
violence. He’s a sexual harasser, a rapist in the making.
Or a college guy takes a girl to a party where she enjoys herself a bit too much, and she ends up back at his dorm room, throwing caution (and her clothes) to the wind. This is “date rape”, it’s “male sexual entitlement”, it’s dangerous. We cannot have girls actually, you know, having buzzed or drunk sex with guys they, um, LIKED enough to say “yes” to a date with.
The truth is a little different, of course. The boy who struts up and puffs out his chest is displaying in the hopes he’ll be selected. The boy who pinches or kisses is trying to show some dominance and get noticed, as is his natural bent. It’s in his blood to find a girl he likes and try to get on her radar screen. And, the college girl who gets out of control with a guy she likes is doing what she wants to do anyway.
Going back even further, women (and some men) understood that nice, kind, polite, “good” men were the best bets for young girls who might not be so good at picking out the best fits long term for themselves. So, daddies and mommies told their princesses to go for the really nice young men, because they were the best “husband” bets. They told their sons to get the “nice” girls by being “nice” themselves.
Fast forward, back to today. The “nice” men were trained by parents and grandparents for a mating and pairing system that hasn’t existed for decades. They’re being told that if they do anything, anything at all, that even HINTS at sexual misconduct, their lives are OVER. They will be charged as sex offenders, with lifetime registry, the whole bit. They’ll lose their jobs. They’ll lose social connections. They’ll suffer ostracism, poverty, financial and social ruination.
Yet at the very same time, these very selfsame men are being derided as spineless pussies, wimps, and unmotivated, incentiveless sacs of plasma who couldn’t assert their way out of wet paper bags.
To a great extent, they’re 100% correct. These men exist because the vast majority of women created them. YOU created the spineless pussies who can’t step to a woman and ask her out, because YOU demanded that they never ever ever talk to a woman for fear of sexual harassment accusations. These men exist because YOU threaten to have them frogmarched out of schools and jobs. These men exist because you told them that nice, kind, supplication and pedestalization are “attractive”. They exist because YOU TOLD THEM TO BE THIS WAY. They exist because YOU told them that this is attractive.
Damaged Women
Most women are increasingly unable to be attracted to men who those women can actually lock down for marriage. The reason for this is well known. They are spending their younger years having sex with the most attractive men they can find. They’re not doing so for the purpose of locking one down for marriage, but specifically for fun and
enjoyment. (Remember: If a woman wants marriage, she can get that. Might not be the best guy; but she CAN get married.)
Most women are not virgins when they walk down the aisle. Even using the conservative CDC figures, the typical woman in the United States marrying today has had 3 or 4 prior sex partners. Somewhere in there is a “serious boyfriend” she was really attracted to and whom she really cared about. There’s probably also at least one “in between guy”, a very attractive man she decided to have sex with on a lark and a whim. The opportunity was there to bed down with a really hawt guy, so she took it.
The primary reason she isn’t with any of those prior men is because she couldn’t get, or didn’t want, commitment from any of them. So, when she finally decides to get serious about marriage, she has to continue looking downmarket until she gets to a man who puts
commitment on the table. Most of the time, the man who offers her commitment is not as attractive as the men she had sex with before him. And she is less able to work up attraction for that man. She has real time, real world experience with other, more objectively attractive men she can remember, usually through quite vivid memories. She cannot help but compare and contrast him with her past memories of more attractive men. This recollection, comparison and contrast almost always leads to the woman (now wife) feeling disappointment, disillusionment, frustration, and ultimate unhappiness.
The true reason is almost never identified. That true reason is almost always (1) she isn’t as attracted to her husband as she was to the prior men (by far and away the most common reason); or (2) she was attracted to him but the attraction has been lost because of his conduct, her conduct or both; or (3) she was never attracted to him in the first place. She feels shortchanged and cheated, because she “settled” for less than what she wanted. This isn’t fair, because she feels she HAD to settle. It was either this “less than” guy, or nobody. It’s this mediocre, “meh”, “best I could do at the time” guy, or a lifetime of spinsterhood.
I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
A related and contributory issue is that most women conceal, or are simply confused about, what they find “attractive”. For men, the word “attractive” means sexual desirability – an “attractive” woman is a woman he wants to fuck.
For women the word “attractive” can connote a myriad of things, and usually means a man she would like to just “be” with or really, really like. For women, sexual desirability is one of the things going into the cocktail of “attractive”, but most women never admit this out loud. To a woman, “attractive” men are sexually desirable AND intelligent AND wealthy AND kind AND handsome AND righteous AND like kids AND have a sense of humor AND well-traveled AND any number of other things. So when a woman says a particular man is “attractive”, she could mean any one or more of those things. She will almost always downplay the importance of her sexual attraction to him, because to give it primacy would make her look shallow and slutty. It IS important to her, but she will never verbally ADMIT that it is, even to herself.
Conclusion
And so though the powers that be and the Cathedral will never admit it, this is why we have the marriage problems we have. We are a nation of unattractive men because most of those men have no chance even with the average women who would be their assortive
mating/pairing counterparts. Those unattractive men have scant incentive to improve themselves for a nation of women who don’t want them and employers who don’t need them. And we are also a nation of women who have casual-sexed themselves out of their own markets. They’ve damaged themselves to the point that they are unwilling and unable to forge long term bonds with the men who will have them.
This is why we have the marriage and divorce problems we have – because of too many unattractive men, too many women having sex with men they can’t marry or don’t want to marry; women who marry men they aren’t attracted to; and too many women with unrealistic and unreasonable expectations.
Alpha Is Assumed 
“too many unattractive men, too many women having sex with men they can’t marry or don’t want to marry; women who marry men they aren’t attracted to; and too many women with unrealistic and unreasonable expectations”
Sums up the problems well. The solutions are relatively simple: men choosing to be men of God; men refusing to accept or marry women who’ve had sex with other men who didn’t marry them; men ignoring women who aren’t attracted to them; and men ignoring women with unrealistic and unreasonable expectations.
Again, I agree with almost all your points, but I would replace “men ignoring women who aren’t attracted to them” with “men learning how to make themselves more attractive to women.” A man who’s a 5 out of 10 on the attraction scale won’t be able to make himself attractive to a women who’s a 9 out of 10, and he should just ignore her and set his sights on someone closer to his level. But if he can learn to make himself more attractive, and bring himself up from a 5 to a 7, then he will have a much better chance of finding a woman who: a) finds him attractive enough that she wants to marry him, and b) whom he finds attractive enough that he wants to marry her. (Say, a woman who was a 7 out of 10 on the scale, who wouldn’t have looked at him when he was a 5, but now that he’s made himself a 7, she’s taking a second look at him when she wouldn’t have before.)
Robin:
“A man who’s a 5 out of 10 on the attraction scale won’t be able to make himself attractive to a women who’s a 9 out of 10, and he should just ignore her and set his sights on someone closer to his level.”
Agree. I also think most men do this. Most men in my experience are more realistic about what they can get, and reasonable about what they expect, than are women. Most men are NOT out there demanding sex and marriage from prom queens and cheerleaders. Most men learn very, very early where they are in the sexual relationship pecking order.
The problem here is that men are failing even with their own rough SMV peers, because the women are so damn unrealistic and unreasonable. You’ve got male 6s who can’t get even the time of day from a female 5, because that female 5 is sleeping with male 8s on the weekends.
Most women are full on totally unrealistic about what they can get for marriage, and unreasonable in what they expect from marriage, because they can get the creme de la creme for sex. That leads to all sorts of confusion and conflation of a woman’s SMV, which is usually a good 2 points higher than her MMV.
(2) she was attracted to him but the attraction has been lost because of his conduct, her conduct or both; – experienced this one first hand.
I’ve read somewhere (probablly Rollo, but can’t recall now) that, in marriage, or any LTR, the woman’s SMV must be inferior than the SMV of the man. That’s the key – the man must have higher value than the woman for the relationship to work. No way around that.
I don’t know that the woman’s SMV has to be inferior to the man’s, but for long term relationships it certainly seems to work much better if the man is a point above the woman.
I agree, the man needs to be at least 1 point higher if the relationship is long-term. If she has a higher point value, or even the same value, then you’ve basically got to run game 24/7… and that’s no kind of life.
Agree – but one reason they’re forced to go downmarket isn’t to get commitment, but because by the time they’re looking to commit, they are at the Wall and their own market value is in steep decline.
If a woman wants commitment, odds are she isn’t going to get it from the extremely sexually desirable man, the male 9s and 10s, unless she is herself a 9 or 10 and can command that kind of price. But most women are not 9s or 10s. I’ve met perhaps one 9 in my entire life, and she lives in an entirely different world, unknown to you and me who write about relationships issues. I’ve never met a 10.
For 98% of women, the 8s and below, who can sleep with (but not get commitment from) male 9s and 10s, they have to go downmarket for commitment, if commitment is what they want. It is literally NOTHING for an HB 8 to secure a male 8 for commitment. She can do it easily.
It is the easiest thing in the world for a woman to find rough SMV peer men willing to offer commitment, but this is the case IF, AND ONLY IF, she makes it known that commitment is what she wants and expects. If she sleeps with men left and right, then she can talk about wanting marriage all she wants, but every guy knows it’s so much bullshit. She has to SHOW that she expects commitment. If she does that, she can be married inside of a year. This whole claim that women have that it is so, so, so HARD to find men willing to marry them is BS, and I have no patience for it whatsoever. NONE.
Quick question – what does HB stand for in “HB 8”? I know most of the rest of the acronyms, but what HB stands for has always eluded me.
HB = Hot Babe.
Distinguishes between sexes. HB 8 is a female 8. “Male 8” is self explanatory.
It is also the case that a woman seeking commitment must, MUST, get realistic about her own SMV and MMV. Most women confuse and conflate their SMVs (higher) with their MMVs (probably 1 to 3 points lower). She needs to get realistic and say
“I’m a 6. I’ll never, ever get a male 9 to marry me. Can sleep with them every day and twice on Saturdays, but marriage? Not happening. I need to search for commitment minded male 6s, 7s and (if I’m lucky) 8s.”
I’m an older guy and I magically found a woman – about eight years younger than me – who had amazingly been intimate with only one other guy before: her ex husband. An extraordinarily low N count for our age group. I can tell you it makes a big difference in her level of cynicism (lower) and desire to please (higher).
Here’s the point, though:
Most women are burning through their SMVs with hot attractive men, because they can.
Most men aren’t with one of their SMV counterparts, because they can’t. They’re not attractive enough. They have no incentives to better themselves.
To me, the answer is this:
If women want men who will stay with them long term, they will have to forego screwing the hot men and look for a suitable potential husband. They will have to look for husbands. Not “men”. Not “a man”. Not a “hawt guy”. Not a “boyfriend”. A HUSBAND. ONE husband. ONE man. Women should be actively seeking to contract ONEitis for a man.
Men need to live their lives for themselves, not for women or a particular woman. At some point in just about every man’s life, he runs into “girl problems”. He needs to
(1) be brutally honest with himself;
(2) apply said honesty to identify where he needs improvement;
(3) determine what he needs to do to improve and what work/effort/changes will be involved;
(4) determine how much improvement he can reasonably make and whether that has the potential to attract a girl he can be attracted to;
(5) decide whether the necessary improvements are worth the effort required, the potential results, and the potential risks of failure; and
(6) either invest the effort and work to improve and take the risks; or decide not to improve, stay where he is, and live with the consequences.
Right now a lot of men are saying: Improve? Why? Not worth it. The women in my range aren’t worth it. The jobs/living arrangements/educational opportunities aren’t worth it.
So I’d say women still have the easier end of things. All they have to do is keep their legs closed until they find a guy worth opening them to.
A man, on the other hand, will have a lot of work to do. If the difficulties faced by the working poor and the African-American communities are any indication, it’s only going to continue on its present course.
Re: your last paragraph. Poor women (mostly fat) and black women (fat, bitchiness, etc.) are not worth decent men’s effort to attract them.
Markpower:
The point I was making is that what’s already happened among the AA and working poor communities is a harbinger for the rest of society. As economic opportunity vanishes, so does the opportunity for the average man to show dominance and confidence, and thus his ability to attract a woman. He becomes further disincentivized and demoralized. Failure begets failure. Meanwhile, the women step in and do the bare basic necessities themselves, and have occasional sex with the hawt guys who slum it and sex them and impregnate them now and then.
Here’s the rub. Let’s say I’m a Male 7. HB7’s aren’t interested in me because they can get Male 8’s and 9’s to have sex with them on a regular basis. I’m being told that I should really settle for a HB5 and that will produce a more stable relationship where she is less likely to leave on a whim because she’ll realize she’s lucky to have a 7.That would require rational thinking on her part. Women are not rational, they always think they can do better. A 5 woman who marries a 7 will then think she’s a 7 even if no one else does. Then she’ll think, “I’m a 7, I should be with at least a 8.”
Also, being a male 7 takes a lot of fucking effort, because women expect EVERYTHING as noted above. I am putting the effort in to attract the best woman I can, and a 5 is not going to cut it. 5 is “meh”. 5 is not actively unattractive. I’m not busting my ass for a 5. Fuck that.
James:
The thought process you just outlined is one that every man has to go through. He will either do the work for what he can get, or not. Only he can make that decision. The more men who say they won’t bust their asses for average, the more women will find themselves either compromising for marriage, or continue getting pumped and dumped.
Deti,
You nailed it. This is probably the most concise explanation as to what is wrong with modern marriage I’ve read to date.
The sad thing is, all of these issues can be fixed, just that most people don’t want to fix them. It all reminds of Jeremiah when he confronted the remnant women in Egypt for their idolatry and the response they gave. Nobody wants to change for the better because they’re having too much fun.
Yup. I don’t see women looking to change this. They like the current system just fine — sleep with hawt guys until you can’t anymore, then parachute into marriage with your rough SMV peer, frivorce him 10 years later and take half the stuff.
What a woman understands by ‘attractive‘ in graphic form.
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When you say attractive does it mean with the physical aspect?
Men’s attraction to women is far and away visual and physical. A woman’s looks and physical appearance are by far, by orders of magnitude, the absolute most important attractant. Fortunately for women, that’s a pretty low bar — most every woman can find SOMEONE attracted to her.
For women, attraction is more complex and based on a cocktail of things. The most important are power and status, which are usually expressed as confidence (a man’s knowledge and inner belief that he can and will do the things he wants to and must do) and dominance (a man’s ability to influence his immediate surroundings and shape them to his liking; his ability to influence other people and situations).
Also important in male attractiveness are a man’s athleticism (body habitus, appearance and conditioning) his looks (overall physical appearance), and his resources (usually his money and material possessions)
This is the dilemma I’ve faced recently. I found a really sweet girl who I got along with. She is low-N and religious. A really good, stable girl. Let’s say she’s about a 7 looks-wise (26 years old), though she’s not completely my type. Part of me feels that I have to talk myself into or consciously make my mind find her attractive. But I built a great connection and relationship with her, met each other’s families, etc.
Part of me feels that at 28, being skilled at Game, and not being completely satisfied/happy at the idea of settling down with her, that I have to move on. I read blog posts like this and I desperately want to “save” her and even save the whole world by holding up this stable paragon of male-female relations. But it stresses me out and distracts me from pursuing my own goals, even just career/income-wise.
Do men have a responsibility not to sleep with or date “good girls” because of the chance of ruining them? Should I be practicing “You break it, you bought it” with this girl? I know in the long run I will feel somewhat trapped and that I didn’t completely make the choice because I wanted to. It’s a really tough situation, and I still care for her deeply and don’t want to throw her back into the wild and make her an “alpha widow” like you describe.
If you haven’t slept with her already. Then dont. it will end badly and may harm her spiritually and psychologically. Tell her you find her attractive but it’s just not there, and move on. Otherwise – if you’ve since fallen in love… take heart and rejoice in the wife of your youth.