After reading everything I could get my hands on, learning everything I can, embracing what I've read, and applying a new outlook that comes with swallowing the pill, I've realized that what TRP really wants me to do is be Don Draper from AMC's Mad Men. He's a great example of holding frame and exemplifies every law of power at one time or another. He's become my idol.

I know that TRP doesn't endorse cheating on a wife, but Don had a lot of plates spinning in the beginning. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of them - Midge, Rachel, Bobbie, Suzanne, and Betty. He had five plates spinning, with whom he could have sex with at any time. (He fingered Bobbie at a dinner that his wife was at - hot damn, Don!). To add to that, he manages a slew of one-night stands and short-term plates as seasons go on. The list is impressive. He also knew when not to start a plate - like when Joan came onto him in Season 4, when it could have gotten in the way of their professional relationship.

On top of that, he was a rock for each and every one. He had time to decompress on his own (and knew that he had to), but he held frame like there was no tomorrow, no matter if he was drunk, sleepy, high, or any other changed mindset. He kept his frame through his divorce of Betty, the establishment of a new company, so forth. He treats women in a way that he shows them that he doesn't need them.

Several plates that Don had tries to manipulate him, I'll list examples:

  • Midge - uses the relationship to have Don to give her money for heroin.
  • Betty - major manipulator, gets a divorce because she's tired of Don, gets remarried and takes the kids - hypergamy, I suppose. (Luckily, the new guy is nice enough to not accept any alimony from Don.) Betty routinely tries to get Don to submit to her throughout the first three seasons, and is tries harder as seasons go on because of what she knows about Don (includes differing things regarding his new marriage, his work, and their kids).
  • Bobbie - she uses the relationship to help her own ideas - Grin and Barrett or helping Jimmy with damage control.

Faye and Rachel are two plates (Faye is kind of a girlfriend) that don't try to use the relationship for their benefit, but simply because they're attracted to Don.

Season 1-3 Don Draper is the perfect example of the way to live TRP. Calm, collected, stoic, quiet, smart, good looking, and wholly aloof and unattached. He says what he wants, gets it, and then when he's tired, he leaves it. He doesn't truly manipulate, he always persuades. He holds his frame, knows that women aren't everything they think they are. He knows that women are manipulators and always try to get the most from whichever guy they're talking to at that moment.

I recommend Mad Men to anyone on this sub, having Don Draper as an example, even in a fictional world, is something that has helped me catch the vision.