The Metamorphoses

Like my last post, we'll start with a history lesson to help you answer a question you've come to TRP to try to answer:

"What makes men and women so different in the way that they love?"

By the end, you will understand that there is an underlying, unifying, SIMPLE theory that connects a number of existing TRP truths quite nicely. But first, history:

The Metamorphoses, as written by Ovid:

Ovid was a Roman poet. An important one, to be sure. He wrote a psuedo-epic, a series of interconnected poems, that defies a genre to this day. Ovid's magnum opus was called "The Metamorphoses."

The work is a pseudo-epic because it unfolds by jumping from one transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling important events in the world of Greek mythology, and other times moving fully into a bizarre tangent. Instead of following the hero's journey and preaching his virtues (a true epic), it simply jumps in between unconnected stories, but nonetheless has a profound, underlying link that ties the spaghetti together - love.

Ovid's work largely focused on the subject, and he masterfully understood its true nature - the Metamorphoses are essentially tales of how love (whether personal or anthropomorphized as Amor aka Cupid) humiliates, confuses, and otherwise makes humorous fools of the Roman Gods.

The work as a whole inverts the Roman culture, elevating human desires and passions by framing the Gods and their desires as comic relief when confronted with this awesomely powerful human element.

The Metamorphoses, as TRP theory:

A woman's relationship with a man changes what she wants in men

A man's relationship with a woman does not change what he wants in women

Many excellent TRP posts and aphorisms have been penned that are derivatives of this unifying theory:

Women's pair bonding mechanism is damaged in a way a man's is not via promiscuity

A true statement, but it's missing the real theory: the woman's pair bonding mechanism isn't damaged by virtue of "being a slut", like we'd like to think (because it is nice and simple and validates our anger towards women that have abandoned or wronged us).

Women love conditionally, and men love (mostly) unconditionally, save for sex and respect.

Also true, also falls short. Yes a woman's love is conditional, but what seems to make it worse over time? Why is hypergamy such a problem for everyone?

Alpha Widow - a woman who has tasted a bit of the top percentage points of men, and is ruined as a result

It's not because some mythical Chad archetype "damaged" her, and now she only wants Chad, like many think....

The lightswitch effect - when a woman decides she's through with you, she rewrites history in a way where you were never attractive in the first place

Profound, and true - but still a derivative: why, besides the superficial convenience of this mechanism for the woman, does the lightswitch effect exist, and WHY IS IT SO INSTANTANEOUS?

Conclusion

The answer lies in the Metamorphoses - promiscuity gives women a huge number of reference points for her ideal man. She creates a list of things she wants for "the one", but the list keeps growing. Uncontrollably. Like all humans, our memories get fuzzy - we tend to just remember the good things from the past. That coping mechanism is the root of nostalgia.

Unfortunately, when men Metamorphose what that woman wants the effect is permanent. The lightswitch effect happens and works because what she wants in a man has now changed, and you're not enough anymore. Her conditions to love have expanded once again, and you now fail to meet the criteria.

If she gathers enough conditions, she reaches the Alpha Widow archetype - her Superman has such a cartoonishly long list of requirements that she resigns herself to "settling" for something less than Superman. She doesn't appreciate that Superman is a collage of all of the traits she liked in men, sans any of the flaws; it is this fundamental misunderstanding that has so radically transformed the modern sexual marketplace. This is the core of the dualistic mating strategy!

Flipping the script to men, TRP is basically a big toolbox designed to avoid negative outcomes, because what we want out of women DOES NOT CHANGE - it is only that we improve our abilities to better select that woman, and manage the relationship to achieve that unchanged and unchanging desired outcome.

Epilogue

From Wikipedia:

The Metamorphoses ends with an epilogue, one of only two surviving Latin epics to do so. The ending acts as a declaration that everything except his poetry—even Rome—must give way to change:

"Now stands my task accomplished, such a work

As not the wrath of Jove, nor fire nor sword

Nor the devouring ages can destroy".

The truth cannot be destroyed. It cannot be unlearned. Once you deeply and truly instill this TRP knowledge within yourself, you'll learn that the world around you may change, but the poetry of TRP will endure. It is non-malleable.... because just like our relationships, your experiences with women will not change the truth.