Does anyone really think that love is blind? That those two very ordinary looking people at Applebee's were bowled over by each other's looks when they first met? Do you really believe that his belly and mostly absent muscle definition on his 5-9 frame grabbed her attention and made her a little dizzy with desire, or that her rounded shoulders and faint but visible acne scars made him afraid to stand up until he stood down?

Or do you think that people who are not anywhere near ideal looking realize this and look at people who have some attractive traits through a soft focus lens? That they make tradeoffs, mostly happily and without complaint? That they see a whole person with their unique mix of qualities through that soft lens, but do that gladly and without effort or settling for a whole person they don't want to be with?

I ask because I believe the fear of settling or being settled for, especially among red pillers, is based on their romantic and almost innocent belief that being attractive enough makes them safe. Safe from the uncertainty of being other than magnetically attractive. Safe from knowing that even beautiful people only truly connect through a kind of alchemy that's impossible to predict. On some level they realize that my second paragraph is closer to reality than my first, but that scares them because it provides no magnetic certainty.

Certainty is a bunch of 6s. It's "getting" sex on the first date. It's being 30 or 35 or older and dating college aged women. And almost any man can achieve this safe and certain state even if he's short of a 6 or two by gaining enough wealth or status to compensate. Or so they sell, or say. Because what kind of world would it be if men couldn't transcend their ordinary reality and the uncertainty it brings and feel unafraid, and safe?

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