Communication and signals

The MRP model of communication and signals

First, let us look at what we signal with our communication, divided into categories that are relevant to sexual strategy:

Trivial signals: This is all the mundane topics - what happened at work, planning the next vacation destination. It can be small or big, you and your wife can have aligned goals or you can be at odds. It is trivial in the sense that it doesn’t have much relevance to sexual strategy. Note that a given interchange can be about something trivial and have elements of sexual strategy like she is also shit testing you. To make things clear, we separate them out - part of the interchange is trivial, another part is sexual strategy. I’m not going to consider trivial signals in the rest of the post.

Alpha signals: This is communication that signals alpha. Confident body language, passing shit tests, cocky remarks, etc. This increases attraction, which has obvious benefits.

Domination signals: This is making her do what you want and enforcing boundaries. Being dominant can have elements of signalling alpha, but there are two important differences: First, this stuff matters to you: life is better when she makes you sandwiches, deepthroats you, and doesn’t fuck other men. Second, with high SMV you can be dominant and she’ll comply and it signals alpha, while low SMV men are ignored and only signal their weakness by trying to be dominant.

Good beta signals: This is stuff that signals beta but doesn’t hurt your alpha. It is passing comfort tests without coming off as weak and supplicant, or sending signals similar to that. Women have a dual sexual strategy and especially in the context of an LTR, they do need beta - giving too little will make her freak out from lack of comfort. As a side note, a lot of good beta signalling can be done actually doing shit - fixing stuff in the house, taking care of the kids, making money.

Blue signals: This is what we at MRP consider the bad signals, where you signal lack of alpha, weakness, supplication, insecurity, fear, sadness, unconditional loyalty, self sacrifice.

Imagine that the signals are the rows in a table.

 

Now let us look at how we choose to communicate (and I don’t mean you necessarily choose rationally, you can have very little conscious say in the matter). You get an idea, how do you communicate it?

STFU: You say nothing.

Habit: You just say something out of habit, it’s what you always say. “No, you don’t look fat in that”.

Emotional: You communicate mainly based on emotion. Maybe you’re scared of her reaction so you can’t help but say what you think will calm her down, maybe you’re angry and say something you don’t really believe, etc.

Tactical: You say not what is on your mind, but something that you believe will manipulate her to your advantage.

Honest and open: You just say what is on your mind.

These are the columns in the table.

 

So all your ideas come tumbling down from the top, and depending on your emotional state, level of self control, ideological beliefs about communication, sexual strategy insights, it goes down one of the columns and ends up in a given row.

Most people aren’t aware of the signals distinction that we use, so they communicate based on the columns. Their emotions guide them, or their belief or personal preference for honesty, or their desire to manipulate.

Here at MRP, we teach guys about the signals and tell them to look ahead in the table, see what signal row you’ll end up in and choose your communication based on that instead.

New guys, we tell them Blue Signals, choose STFU. Domination, choose STFU (stop nagging her for sex, you don’t have the SMV to back it up). Alpha signals, be honest or tactical (fake it till you make it).

As they get their SMV up and their wives become more submissive, they can choose to be open and honest with their domination signals.

And once they get to the endgame and they settle into their masculine identity, most of their ideas fall in line, most of their impulses go into open and honest column and ends up in the good signal rows naturally and they don’t even get the idea to say blue shit very often.

 

Does communication work?

When people talk about if communication works, they rarely mean in the broad sense of “everything is communication”. They usually mean honest and open communication.

Does honest and open communication work?

The MRP position is that good relationships are based on signalling alpha and good beta, not signalling blue (or at least very little), and being dominant once your SMV is up. We should all be convinced in how well this works.

To the extent that your honest and open communication results in those signals, sure communication works.

In Communication Doesn't Work....or Maybe... u/Blarg_Risen outlines his thoughts on communication, which go quite a bit further than sticking to MRP signals. There's a lot of good, really red stuff in the post, and that's a big part of the problem. With that much red, and from a guy who obviously has his shit together and a good relationship, it's easy to miss that some of it might not be red. It's not uncommon on MRP or TRP to see alphas who have an easy time with women think that everything they do improves their relationship (leadership and wealth being two common traits that often gets mistaken for something that turn women on). In this case, it's communication, where Blarg outlines his thoughts on how MRP doesn't understand communication and is afraid to try honest communication.

When someone comes along and says MRP is wrong and gets a 97% upvote rate, we have to examine it further. Is MRP wrong?

If MRP is wrong and that there is intrinsic value and benefit in communication, regardless of what it signals, there has to be value in blue signals.

Does anyone really believe that? Is signalling low alpha somehow good? If that's not the case, where does the benefit come from? Trivial signals?

If you’re saying that honest and open communication is good, but only to the extent that you’re signalling alpha, good beta and domination, you’re saying the exact same thing as MRP. There’s nothing new here. If there is an MRP end goal, it is to build a masculine identity where that is the case.

Let’s take a very alpha guy, 90% of the time his honest communications signals alpha, domination and good beta, the other 10% he signals blue. Can he get away with that, and have a wife who is attracted to him? Sure. Is it optimal? No. Is it good advice to signal blue 10% of the time? No.

It’s like a shredded guy eating ice cream, sure he can get away with it because the rest of his diet and lifting is good enough, but it isn’t optimal and not something you’d recommend outside of letting people relax a bit to stay sane.

And I agree with relaxing a bit, especially once your SMV is up. I don’t believe you should constantly be keeping score of your alpha points: enjoy the leeway you get from having a huge surplus of alpha.

The simple truth is this: when she thinks her man is hot, and she knows that he doesn't tolerate too much lip from her - he can say some stupid shit, and she'll nod her head and go along with it anyway. And I can't overlook how Blarg points out that if she doesn't agree with him, they'll just part ways.

But there’s a fucking big difference between saying that you can relax a bit once you’re alpha, and saying that honest and open communication is good in itself.

So does open and honest communication work? To the extent that you signal red, sure - what matters is what you signal. Does it matter much of it is honest? Not really. Is honest communication that signals blue good? No.

 

The dangers of an believing that open and honest communication is good

Humans are terrible at self evaluation. How we see the world is greatly influenced by emotion, beliefs, ego protection, cognitive dissonance and many other biases. Anyone who hasn’t read up on the extreme degree our biases muddle or thinking should do so, right now. Get Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.

We can combat our biases, and regarding communication we do so by looking at what we signal.

If we don’t, we very easily get caught up in the traps of thinking that whatever we want and feel is good. I’ve written about this before, how our desire to explain our vision early is usually a mistake ("Do you like my dissected boobs?) or how many men think their beta desires are something women respect them for (Most men's masculine ideal is not alpha).

In the recent post on the merits of communication, it even went so far as to praise having the courage to be vulnerable by communicating weakness. Just no. Women don’t think you’re hot because you have the balls to share your fears and sorrows with her. It's not ballsy, it's just sharing weakness. This is exactly the sort of cognitive dissonance you fall into when you begin believing that “communication is good”, you twist reality to fit your beliefs instead of thinking critically.

Nothing indicates that communication is good. It is about the signals. You want to signal alpha, good beta and domination, and you want to avoid signalling blue. You should stay away from any idea that removes you from that understanding and makes you uncritically pour your heart out with open and honest communication, without being aware of what you're signalling.

 

The other coin of communication - listening to her

The standard MRP position here is to have your own vision and follow it. Don’t listen to your wife, respond with A&A or STFU to her requests and criticisms (with regards to your personality and your relationship - we’re not talking about her asking you to lift a heavy box or planning your vacation).

There are good reasons not to listen what she says, some of the issues are:

Lack of introspection: People very often have poor introspection. They are often not aware of what they want, and especially common is lacking the ability to predict future enjoyment. As an obvious example, take how women react to the red pill (typically disgust that we’re learning how to cheat them) yet once her man actually alphas up, he’s suddenly so fucking hot and she can’t believe she has a man like that at home.

Timidity, resistance to change, laziness, inability to delay gratification: People refrain from doing smart things all the time. They’re scared trying something new, they’re too lazy to go to the gym, they really want to eat another serving of dessert. Yet I don’t think anyone would disagree that enjoying what life has to offer and being fit and healthy is way better long term. But they'll hamster their shortsighted desires to no end.

Tactical communication: People say shit to manipulate the other person into doing what they want. Maybe they don’t want to argue, so they say what the other person wants to hear. Maybe they’re afraid of the consequences of saying no.

Shit testing: The main reason for not listening is shit testing (or compliance testing). Women have a dual sexual strategy and one way this manifests itself is to compliance test men, often with something very unreasonable - if the man complies, she gets him to service her and she knows he’s a beta she shouldn’t fuck, if he passes the shit test she’s learned he’s a fuckable alpha. It’s a brilliant strategy.

When you go down the “communication is a two way street” route, you have to take a different stance. You have to trust and respect what the other person says - if you think you're mostly hearing bias, justification, manipulation and shit tests, you're not listening. And trusting and respecting what someone says, that's a very weak position to take. You're suddenly easily vulnerable to manipulation and deception, or even just taking an honest mistake they make and running with it because you "hear what she's saying".

In the post on the merits of communication, it was described (correctly) how competent women can be in their lives. This was major premise for the whole idea. If they’re not competent, why respect what they want?

But competency is not relevant. Someone competent can still be manipulative and tactical in their communication. In fact, the more someone has achieved, the more likely they are to be very adept at making people do what they want.

This holds doubly true in a relationship since women shit test. Women are not solely interested in a cooperative effort with honest communication to maximize relationship quality - for them to enjoy a relationship they have to feel their man is alpha, and they do this by shit testing which by its nature is bullshit and deceptive. You’re supposed to disregard it.

Believing in communication before you’re very alpha and she’s very submissive is disastrous. You absolutely have to pass shit tests and not listen to her initially.

Once she submits, this behavior largely subsides. But shit tests still happen from time to time. You have to be ready for this and respond correctly. Even vets, if they fail a shit test by taking her seriously, it can spiral out of control. Women probe for frame weaknesses and if they find one, they’ll keep hammering on that flaw, harder and harder, insisting that you understand and respect this feeling she has, and the more you do the less alpha you signal. You put yourself in a weak and exploitable position by believing in the merits of communication.

Maybe there’s some level of alphaness where women stop shit testing at all, but I doubt it. And if there is, it is not a place you got to by communicating, it was something you achieved with high alpha and dominance.

The degree to which she is on board and being cooperative is entirely based on high alpha and dominance where she submits and accepts your vision. From that position of position, and to the degree that she submits, sure, communication can be productive and mutually beneficial. u/HornsOfApathy has great posts about the level he has taken this to with their very intimate D/s relationship, and while most vets haven’t gone so far many of us enjoy that the shit testing is rare and our wives communicate honestly most of the time.

But this is an effect of her submitting, and that happened because we were dominant instead of listening back when she was still shit testing and challenging us regularly.

 

Observations on relationships with varying degrees of communication

If we look at bad relationships, where the man is low alpha and has communicated his needs and feelings very openly, this never works. Seeking the help of a marriage counsellor that helps them communicate better, again, it doesn't work.

When such a man limits his communication to signalling what MRP suggests, we see massive improvements in attraction and relationship quality.

The path to relationship happiness certainly isn’t through honest and open communication.

If we look at the high end, we have dominant men with submissive wives. Some of them praise communication. Some of them don’t.

Take a guy like /u/red-sfpplus. Does anyone believe that if he settled down, his steady girl wouldn’t be crazy about him and super submissive even if he didn’t communicate with and listen to her?

There are other vets here who are alpha, married and don’t place much value on communication. Are they doing well or not? I’ve had periods at high SMV where I didn’t listen to or respect my wife at all, and it worked just fine.

Take the vets who communicate with and respect their wives. Let’s take away the communication except for the MRP suggested signalling. Does anyone really believe their alpha wouldn’t carry their relationship on its own? That their wives would stop submitting because they stopped?

Let’s take one of the communicating vets, and his wife suggests something he doesn’t like - and he goes along with it. What is the probability that she won’t ask for a bit more next time? And where does that spiral end? Does it stop before he either puts his foot down, or she loses respect? Does communication and respect work outside of a dominant frame, without a “my way or the highway” principle?

No matter how I look at it, I can’t see communication outside of MRP style signalling being productive - it is irrelevant, counterproductive or an indulgence (and there’s nothing wrong with being indulgent, all else being equal).

 

Conclusion

For a lot us, communication is great. We love to talk, to be heard, to be understood, to explain things, to be agreed with, to have our vision shared.

MRP has identified the problems that arise from this desire when it signals blue - as it can easily end up doing.

Luckily, many men are able to settle into a masculine identity where they are very red - naturally alpha and dominant, with some good beta sprinkled in. That’s who many of us are, and to the extent we are, communicate all of that freely without inhibition. And heck, with enough frame whatever blue shit comes out once in a while, don’t sweat it, you got the SMV buffer to handle it.

Those that aren’t so lucky, if there’s too much blue in you and not enough alpha, exercise some self control, stick to MRP style signalling.

This is drastically different than saying “MRP doesn’t give enough credit to communication, there is great value in communicating honestly and openly, and your wife is competent and will work for the relationship”.

Let’s go back and look at the communications/signals table - MRP has no problem with anything that ends up signalling domination (provided sufficient SMV), alpha or good beta. It is only the blue signals we don’t want. Are honestly communicated blue signals really beneficial?

I don’t believe that, and I’m not sure Blarg believes it either. I don’t think Blarg is blue, on the contrary I believe he is alpha and dominant enough that his wife is submissive, which is why they can communicate. His understanding of the role communication plays is just flawed, but he has lots of other shit going for him so it all works just fine anyway.

Most of the vets are there, with wives who have submitted, who work to provide value for her man and her family, who communicate properly most of the time. It’s a natural consequence of the man being alpha and dominant, it’s exactly what the classic MRP first mate metaphor is.

If you contrast Communication Doesn't Work....or Maybe... with u/HornsOfApathy's writing, there’s a clear difference. Horns obviously values their communication, the deep connection they have, their shared vision and their mutual respect. But Horns doesn’t highlight his ideas as different than MRP’s, and he clearly understands that all of it is possible because it originates in a D/s dynamic. It’s his dominance and her submission that lets them connect this way, not the other way around. I'm not even sure he communicates anything but alpha, domination and good beta, which is exactly what MRP suggests.

I completely understand the desire for communication and connection, and the satisfaction that can come from indulging it, but it has to happen in the context of the MPR understanding of what you’re signalling. For the true alpha, this is not important because he doesn't signal blue, but some guys are more blue and really need to understand the distinction, and what I find especially unfortunate is that “honest and open communication” is almost an ideology that many were raised with, making it very easy to be led astray.

Another unfortunate concept I've seen thrown around is that this thing with communication and connection is the next level of MRP, some transcendent state. It is not. Maxing dominance and alpha is. If we want to give guys solid advice, that's what we need to tell them. If guys want that deep intimate connection and their wives aren't meeting them, 99% of the time they need more alpha and dominance (and that doesn't mean aggressive or oppressive - true dominance is calm, confident, assertive), not better communication.

And guys who don't want communication, they're not falling short of the final stage of MRP. Some guys are the independent type, or they're assholes. They're not lesser not, they're not worse at romantic relationships. The fact is, guys who lean blue have always looked at assholes and wondered why women put up with it. The simple truth is, all this communicating and listening, it's just not that important. Signalling alpha is.