One of the withdrawal symptoms of unplugging from the Matrix is usually an overwhelming nihilism that results from being torn away from the previous blue pill preconceptions a man has been conditioned to for most of his life. It’s my hope that in the future red pill men will make the necessary interventions and apply what they’ve learned from their unplugging and red pill truths in general towards their sons (and daughters) as well as other men they know or are related to. Until then, the process of breaking away from that conditioning is usually going to begin as the result of a traumatic breakup, a divorce, or having had the relational equity he thought he’d built a long term relationship on proved worthless in the face of hypergamy.
It’s a sad reality of unplugging that it most often starts as a result of emotional anguish, but to pour salt in those wounds is then having to live with the harsh realities that the red pill makes men aware of – that more or less everything they’d held as an ego-investment up to that point was founded on a feminine-primary conditioning. I summed this up in The Bitter Taste of the Red Pill:
The truth will set you free, but it doesn’t make truth hurt any less, nor does it make truth any prettier, and it certainly doesn’t absolve you of the responsibilities that truth requires. One of the biggest obstacles guys face in unplugging is accepting the hard truths that Game forces upon them. Among these is bearing the burden of realizing what you’ve been conditioned to believe for so long were comfortable ideals and loving expectations are really liabilities. Call them lies if you want, but there’s a certain hopeless nihilism that accompanies categorizing what really amounts to a system that you are now cut away from. It is not that you’re hopeless, it’s that you lack the insight at this point to see that you can create hope in a new system – one in which you have more direct control over.
Try to keep this last part in mind as you read what I propose in these next two posts. I read a lot of guys in various forums getting despondent after having the red pill make sense to them, but that despondency is really a simple lack of not having a path already preset for them to follow. Instead of the easy answers and prerequisite responsibilities that the blue pill and the Feminine Imperative had ready for him to follow, now in his new awareness he’s tasked with making a new path for himself, and that’s both scary and exciting at the same time.
Love Styles
In almost 3 years of blogging and a book written, my three most popular posts have been the Love series – Women in Love, Men in Love and Of Love and War. Though my SMV graph gets the most link backs, these are easily the most viewed posts on Rational Male. Unfortunately they’re often the most misquoted and misunderstood.
One of the toughest revelations of the red pill is coming to terms with the difference in experience and concept that men and women apply to love. The core principle in Women in Love is often misunderstood. For different reasons, deliberate or otherwise, both men and women critically misunderstand the main premise of that post:
Iron Rule of Tomassi #6
Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.In its simplicity this speaks volumes about about the condition of Men. It accurately expresses a pervasive nihilism that Men must either confront and accept, or be driven insane in denial for the rest of their lives when they fail to come to terms with the disillusionment.
Women are incapable of loving men in a way that a man idealizes is possible, in a way he thinks she should be capable of.
Most critics of my differing assessment of how either sex interprets and considers love tend to blow past this last part. They oversimplify my meaning and sputter out something to the effect of, “That Tomassi guy thinks that women can’t ever really love men, what preposterous crap!”
Of course that isn’t my assertion, but I understand the want to dismiss this notion, particularly for men and women invested in the ideal of equalitarianism. It’s a threat to the ego-investment that men and women are anything less than fully equal and rational agents who come together for each other’s mutually agreeable benefit. The simple fact of women’s innate hypergamy puts the lie to this presumption, as well as confirms the relevancy of women’s constant, qualitative conditionality for whom (really what) they’ll love. I think it’s ironic that the same people who disparage this concept are among the first to readily embrace the pop-psychology notion of Love Languages.
I get why that premise pisses off women (and feminized men); it’s very unflattering to be accused of loving men from a position of opportunism. However, it’s important to understand that I don’t make this observation to condemn the way women approach love – although I’m sure it will follow, my point isn’t to presume a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way for women to love men or vice versa. There are beneficial and detrimental aspects of both women’s opportunistic approach to love, and men’s idealistic approach to love. That said, I happen to believe that the differing ways men and women love each other evolved to be complementary to the other and for the betterment of our species.
For all the “OMG I can’t believe this red pill asshole thinks women can’t really love men” misdirection, I should point out that well intentioned men, especially the newly red pill, are also guilty of the same oversimplification. Theirs is an attempt to find validation in the (usually recent) trauma of having been cut away from their prior blue pill conditioning. A similar, “Rollo says women can’t really love men, of course, it’s all so clear to me now” satisfies a simplistic need for confirmation of their former condition.
And again, it’s not a right or wrong way of loving, it’s the lack of recognizing the difference and being on the punishing side of that lack. Most men will want to apply their concepts of honor or justice in assessing how ‘right’ men’s idealistic love is, while women will still see the inherent value in loving what a man is as a prerequisite for loving who a man is. Hypergamy doesn’t care about men’s idealistic expectations of love, but neither does men’s rationality make concessions for what facilitates women’s opportunistic approach to love.
Romantic Souls
From The Red Pill subreddit:
My whole life, I’ve had it nailed into me that I would be able to find true love if I was honest and hardworking. As I grew older it was, “If I’m somewhat fit and have a good job making 60k-80k a year, I’ll find that beautiful girl that loves me as I love her“.
As I’ve stated on many occasions, it is men who are the True Romantics. Granted, it’s the unthoughtful result of centuries of evolved ‘courtly love’, but in the realm of what qualifies as a true act of romance, it’s men who are the primary actors; it’s men who ‘make’ (or want to make) romance happen. And of course therein lies the problem, a man cannot ‘make’ romance happen for a woman.
For all a man’s very imaginative, creative, endeavors to manufacture a romance that will endear a woman to him, his ‘trying’ to do so is what disqualifies his intent. For every carefully preplanned ‘date night’ after marriage, there’s a college girl swooning to bang her boyfriend living in a shithole, sheets over the windows, furniture from the dumpster, pounding shitty beer and sleeping on a soiled mattress on the floor. Romance isn’t created, romance just happens, and it’s a tough, but valuable, lesson when men come to realize that a happenstance bag of skittles, or a ring made from a gum wrapper at the right time meant more to a woman than every expensively contrived ‘romantic getaway’ he’d ever thought would satisfy her need for lofty romance.
An important part of the red pill is learning that the most memorable acts of love a man can commit with a woman are acts of (seeming or genuine) spontaneity and never apparently and overtly planned (and yes, that applies to sex as well). This is a source of real frustration for a man since his blue pill conditioning expects the opposite from him, and his romantic nature – the nature that wants her to love him as he loves her – conspires with his problem solving nature, thus prompting him to ever greater romantic planning for what he hopes will be an appreciated, reciprocated love.
The Hierarchy
The true source of a man’s frustration lies in his misdirected hope that a woman’s concept of love matches his own. His ideal is a beautiful girl that loves him the same way he loves her. The presumption (a romantic one perpetuated by the myth of egalitarian equalism) is that his concept of idealized love is a universal one which women share with men in general and him in particular.
Thanks mostly to men’s blue pill conditioning, what most men fail to ever consider is that women’s hypergamic based love always considers what he is, before who he is. For a more detailed explanation of this I’ll refer you to my post Love Story. This is the root of the intersexual hierarchy of love.
Before the rise of feminine social primacy, the above ‘flow chart’ of love prioritization would hardly have been an afterthought for a man. Through any number of evolutionary and sociological progressions the base understanding of how Men’s love began from a position of protecting, provisioning for and directing of the lives of both his wife and children wasn’t a concern worth too much of his consideration. Neither was a prevailing desire for a reciprocal model of love an overshadowing concern.
To be sure, a baseline requirement of a returned love, sex, respect and fidelity were important elements, but this wasn’t the originating basis of male desire for being loved; there was no expectation of a woman loving him as he loved her (and by extension their children). To be a man was to have the capacity to provide a surplus beyond his own provisioning.
“A man provides, and he does it even when he’s not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it, because he’s a man.”
Gustavo’s monologue in my opening video may seem like an anachronism, especially in the light of a red pill awareness of the potential for injustice and the veritable certainty of a provisioning arrangement that will almost always be a one-sided proposition for a man – whether he’s loved, respected, appreciated, married or divorced.
Undoubtedly there’ll be men reading this bristling at the idea of a non-equitable model for love, but I’d argue that the idea of an equitable model is the result of the conditioning an egalitarian equalism has predisposed men to believe is even possible.
Before the rise of feminine primacy, a man’s expression of love through his support and guidance simply weren’t things women or children had the capacity to reciprocate. The advent of women’s independence, real or imagined, has served to strip men of this core understanding of the differences between male and female concepts of love. In the effort to feminize men more fully, and position men in a condition of confusion about what constitutes masculinity, this concept of love was replaced by a feminine-primary model for love.
While a woman’s respect, and a degree of love may flow back to her man, her primary love and concern is directed towards her children. One reason we’re still shocked by women who kill their children (pre or post natal) is due to an inherent acknowledgement of this natural dynamic. Women’s brain function and biochemistry largely evolved to predispose them to bonding with their children, and thus ensure the survival of the species. Beyond the rigors of physically gestating a child, raising children to self-sufficiency required a considerable investment of effort and resources – not to mention a constant attention. Nature selected-for women with an innate capacity to nurture and direct love primarily towards children.
The internal psychology women evolved to vet for men who displayed traits for both Alpha physical prowess and parental investment / provisioning potential are a result of children being a priority for a woman’s love. While a degree of maintaining a man’s continued commitment to the family unit requires her attentions in the form of sex and affections, a woman’s primary love focus is directed towards children.
Granted, not all women are capable of having children (or some even desirous of them), but even in these instances substitute love priorities still supersede directing her primary attention towards a man. It may seem like I’m attempting to paint women’s love as callous or indifferent, but this ‘directioning’ isn’t a conscious act, but rather due to the innate understanding that a man is to direction his love towards her as a priority.
This should give readers a bit to chew on for a while. In Part II I’ll detail the alternative hierarchy models prevalent for modern, post-feminine primacy relationships.
