If you haven't yet taken a look at Rollo's series on Plate Theory, it's an absolutely Must Read for anybody invested in working on their own sexual strategy.

Below are a list of articles and choice excerpts:

Plate Theory

The Cardinal Rule of Relationships In any relationship, the person with the most power is the one who needs the other the least.

When a man spins more plates, when he has irons in the fire, when he is pursuing multiple women simultaneously, when he has options equally worth exploring, a man will have a natural, subconscious (but not exclusively) understanding that if one prospect does not expand, others very well may. This understanding has manifestations in a man’s behavior that women key on covertly. There are mannerisms and attitudes that a man with options will subconsciously convey to prospective women that they interpret, and give this man a value as a commodity to be competed for with other females.

Plate Theory II: Non-Exclusivity

Monogamy is a byproduct, not a goal.

One of the biggest hurdles guys have with Plate Theory is breaking themselves of this ‘LTR-as-Goal’ mentality. Obviously I’m not anti-monogamy, however monogamy should never be a goal, it should be a by-product of Plate Theory, but only when you’ve properly filtered through enough plates to understand how options play into confidence and controlling the frame. If a woman is unwilling to be non-exclusive with you (i.e. “she’ll leave me if I see other girls” fear) she isn’t a plate to spin. This seems counterintuitive to a guy with an LTR-As-Goal mentality and it is, but the guy who can fearlessly, and honestly stay above-board with his intent is the one who’ll be spinning more plates. Most guys (AFCs in particular) are deathly afraid of losing that ONE perfect girl and so never even attempt to spin more than one plate, much less have any others to compare her ‘perfection’ to in the first place. I’ve even seen PUAs do exactly this. They’re so impressed with the success of newly perfected techniques that they settle for the ONE ‘dream girl’ and find that their attentions become valueless to her because she perceives she is his only option for intimacy, his script gets flipped on him, and he gets marginalized. It’s not a failure in technique, but rather a failure in his mindset.

Plate Theory III: Transitioning

Men literally live and die according to their options, so it stands to reason they ought to entertain a prolonged period in their lives where they are open to exploring the most options they have access to while concurrently developing and improving themselves prior to making a commitment of this magnitude.

And this is precisely where most men fail. They buy into and internalize psychological social contrivances (i.e. ONEitis) that are little more than effective means of inculcating a self-expectation of accountability and liability to make this commitment, irrespective of maturity level or personal success (not simply financial success). The saddest ones, the AFC ones are the pitiable men who carry these contrivances into marriage and even old age without ever understanding that they had more potential which they squandered due to an inability to see past these contrivances and learn to be selective based on experience.

Plate Theory IV: Goal-State Monogamy

“I’m just not like that. I don’t want to be considered a playah. I could never do that to a woman. How can anyone be like that?”

This rationale is a common one and not limited just to AFCs. There are plenty of otherwise confident, positively masculine men who’d still think they owe it to women to allow them to set the frame of their relationships without any fear of competition anxiety. Players are men who’re dishonest – they are not spinning plates because they are isolating each plate independent of the other, and this goes back to logistics. Of course you can’t find time for anything else if all you do is try to coordinate each individual story with each plate for fear that they discover each other. The plate spinning Man has no need for this, because he NEVER IMPLIES EXCLUSIVITY TO ANY PLATE. Either they accept this or they’re not a plate to consider. Done in a frank, honest, yet indirect above-table way you will not be a ‘Player’ and you will establish yourself as Man who’s attention is worth competing for.

Plate Theory V: Lady’s Game

It is socially acceptable for a woman to blatantly spin plates.

Does this sound outrageous? While a woman who makes her sexual practices a bit too overt runs the risk of being perceived as a slut (which is dubious in this age as it is), most relatively attractive women covertly have a constant bullpen of starters ready to go to bat at any one time – these are also known as ‘Orbiters’. These are the attention providers, the “maybe” guys. And it makes little difference in terms of available options which she chooses at any given time, the very fact that she has five or six of them pursuing her is enough to boost her sense of self-worth, her social status within her same-gender peers, and give her the confidence to drop any one of her plates at a moments notice for any reason knowing that 2 or 3 more guys (or 20 more on facebook) stand ready to take his place, no questions asked and prepared rationalizations at the ready.

In addition, this practice is socially reinforced by women doing the same thing and the social conventions constructed to excuse the behavior. It’s the unspoken rule of a woman’s prerogative; she can always change her mind. This is a powerful tool for women – in any situation, if a woman doesn’t choose to be sexual it is necessarily forced (or obligated), even when it’s after the fact. Either the “Jerk” forced her, physically or emotionally, or she had thought she wanted to, but later reconsidered – it makes little difference. In all social situations the default is to side with the feminine, the “weaker sex” – women, from sympathy or empathy, and men, from a desire to eventually become intimate with them. Dalrock expertly describes this convention in his “Don’t hit me, I’m a girl” post.

Plate Theory VI: Abundance & Scarcity

By practicing Plate Theory, your mental attitude will be such (or should be such) that you will pass most shit test based simply on this practice. Abundance thinking is the root of Plate Theory. A lot has been written about approaching women (and really life in general) from a position of Abundance. People often make the mistake of assuming that having a wide variety of choices tends to cheapen the commodity, and to a degree this is accurate, but it also allows for a better, learned awareness of which choice amongst the pool is common and which is of higher quality.

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