As I've observed numerous relationships in the last couple years, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon. I call them gravitational centers. These are relational norms that people tend to gravitate toward without even realizing it - and they can work either for or against you.

These are pretty obvious when taking a bird's eye view of how most men see progress in their MRP journey - both relationally (respect) and sexually (seduction). Understanding how gravitational centers work would have helped me break covert contracts early on, as well as staying motivated in my MAP, because it gives a framework for accepting the reality that women will sometimes refuse to respond to your improvements the way you think they should.

To make it easy to visualize, I've created a simple graph that should show you how this works. For easy reference:

  • Red means the woman has given up. She is repelled by her husband.

  • Orange means she has no interest in working on herself. She gravitates away from her husband, but watches to see what happens.

  • Gray means there is no gravitational pull at all. You're just existing.

  • Green means the wife is responding to her husband by improving herself, following his lead in the self-improvement venture.

  • Dark green is where the wife feels the need to impress her man and that the onus for self-improvement is on her to keep up with where she perceives he already is.

This is far from a perfect graph, and the slopes certainly need a lot more readjusting - but heck, I only had an hour and a half to put this post together, so deal with it.


BOB'S STORY

A lot of what's written on MRP is targeted content, addressing a single event or discussing one concept. Reading the broader case studies that tracked the whole of a man's journey often helped me stay motivated, so let's start with a common RP story in the broad picture to show how the various gravitational centers affect sexual responsiveness: nuclear to bliss. I'll use a case study from a guy I've discipled for the past 2 years. For the sake of anonymity, let's call him Bob and his wife Jane. Bob, feel free to out yourself if you think it'd add to the conversation.

NUCLEAR: Bob's wife, Jane, threatened divorce a couple years ago. They were in the red zone. She wasn't getting any tingles or fuzzies. Bob was 100lbs overweight and had no clue what a clit is, much less how to find it. He was more interested in the latest Netflix Original than walking out the front door, and his mission was dictated to him by an NPC on his computer screen.

He responded to the threat of divorce by promising to improve. He did improve. He dropped 20lbs in the first few weeks and started contributing to chores. Did Jane see this improvement and reward him for it? No. If anything, she backed away even more, still repulsed by him.

Why would she do that when he's making progress? I hear this story all the time among my clients who are shocked when their wife files after they made the changes they promised her. It's because Jane rooted herself into a view of Bob that she could not pull away from. It was as though he was on a bungee cord - the further he tried to pull away from Jane's view of him and the relationship, the more tension existed that, in her crazy rationalization, only reaffirmed that they were in a bad, tense marriage and she wanted out.

SURVIVING. At some point, the bungee cord stretched like a mangled slinkee. It's still all connected, but even if you let go, it wouldn't recoil all the way. There's extra slack in the line to work with. When Bob crossed that threshold, Jane was willing to give him a chance. Bob's still pretty darn blue because he's doing all of this for Jane at the time, but at least the weight keeps going down and he's starting to take ownership of his own home and life responsibilities. He mistakenly makes Jane his purpose, but at least it's better than his previous mission of making as much time for games as possible.

Jane's still skeptical and gravitating toward divorce, but at least she's willing to let things play out before pulling the trigger. She's gone from red to orange. There's a line ahead of her and she sees it. She wants Bob to succeed and cross that threshold, but expects him to fail. She herself still feels no compulsion to improve.

GRAY ZONE 1. After enough stretching, the cord finally snaps. Jane is now more interested to see how far Bob will go than she is in looking up attorneys online. In stead of being repulsed by him, she's intrigued by him. She's obviously not going to be chasing after him or try to improve herself yet, but she's not pulling away either. There is no pulling force. Life just exists here.

Jane was willing to call Bob her husband again, rather than "that scumbag I'm planning on divorcing." She acknowledges her marriage to Bob ... it's just an unhappy one.

PULL UP TO CENTER. At some point, Bob crossed another threshold. He started dressing nicer, and his clothes were actually fitting. He began wearing cologne. He's initiating sex again. Jane sees the possibility that their marriage can shift from unhappy to normal.

In this first green zone, Jane sees hope for what their relationship could become. Suddenly she's willing to work on herself. She believes that a little improvement on her part will continue encouraging Bob in his efforts to improve as well. She's manipulating him, but in her mind it's for the best. All the same, Jane's becoming sexually responsive to Bob again, so things are looking up.

CENTER. At some point their lives just kind of normalize. This is the second status quo. Just as there was a bungee cord in the bottom left when Jane wanted to divorce Bob, now there's a bungee cord in the dead-center. They aren't unhappy, but they're not excited every time the other one walks in the door either. They're perfectly neutral. Things in the relationship feel balanced, which at first sounds good, but then it means no one is yearning.

If Bob were to have faded downward a bit, Jane would have been motivated to get things back to center. Instead of Bob thinking 300lbs was just his normal weight, suddenly 230 is normal. If he pops up to 240 for a time he feels it and something in him causes him to gravitate back to 230 again. The same thing with his lifts - if they slack, he feels a drawing force back to what he was lifting at this center line. This applies to his efforts at leading in the relationship or taking ownership of his home - as he slacks, he sees the negative impact and is motivated to re-stabilize on that normal line.

PULL DOWN TO CENTER. But Bob's not okay with neutral. He keeps improving. It's harder than it was now. In the lower left sections, Bob first just wanted to avoid divorce, then he saw a "normal marriage" as some light at the end of the tunnel he was striving for. Now he's got what he believes all his friends have. Is it really worth it to keep going? He gravitates back toward the center and must have an extreme will-power to keep going up.

Jane also became comfortable with neutral. She put in a bit of effort. She dropped 10lbs. It's nowhere near the 70lbs Bob lost, but she had less to lose in the first place, she thinks. She smiles more than she used to in the gray first gray zone, and that should be enough for Bob. Yeah, he can keep improving, but he should be grateful for all the ways she's been improving. She puts the cap on the toothpaste now. Shouldn't that mean something to him? I've already put in the effort, she tells herself. I'm good now. I'll be Bob's cheerleader as he keeps going while I sit right on this line.

GRAY ZONE 2. After deciding that "normal" wasn't enough, he keeps going. Now he's developing his social game. He's working on his Keno. He's trying new things in bed. He's getting too far ahead of her, so Jane finally agrees to meet him where he's at. She crosses into the gray zone with him. They reach a new status quo.

Unlike the first status quo, they're not "unhappily married" (default in most sitcoms), nor are they the second status quo of neutrality (where we just assume other people always are). Now they are "happily married." There's no pull up or down, left or right - they're fine just where they're at.

THRIVING. But then Bob keeps improving. He's not doing it for Jane anymore. He's doing it because the further he gets from his former unattractive slob self the happier he is with his life - and he wants to see just how far that road will take him.

He's no longer one of the "better guys" anymore. Now he's one of the best guys. He went from fat slob to respectable hunk. Other girls are taking notice of him and Jane sees it. At first she's mad and wants to pull him back to that center-line, but part of her likes it. If she want it to continue, she realizes she'll have to improve herself just to keep up. Now she's not doing it to motivate Bob - she's doing it because Bob has motivated her.

Jane sees another green light - a need to improve herself. Even if Bob stopped improving, just by being one of the "best guys" around, Jane constantly feels on her toes - a persistent pressure to keep Bob happy and make a real effort in the relationship. She's initiating sex more than he is. She takes care of the household responsibilities - without him even having to ask. She buys him little fun surprises when she's at the mall. Life is good.

BLISS. Now, making gains at some point becomes difficult. It's like building a house. One day the foundation is laid. Then the next couple days the structure is up. "Wow, you got all that done in a day?" Then the utility lines are installed, and a day after that the insulation and siding are put in. "Wow, look at that progress! This is going faster than I thought." Then the flooring is installed in a day. The dry wall in another day. Then the amenities are put in (stove, toilets, etc.). All this massive progress in the span of a few short weeks. But something bizarre happens. You stop seeing progress. The workers are there for hours painting baseboard and nailing it in. It takes two whole days for one of the guys just to tile the shower. It's a week for painting and caulking and detailing. What's taking so long?

Bob finally got a foundation laid and structure put in place. He had all the amenities to make Jane swoon, but the detailing would take much longer. Bob's still working on that.

But from other relationships with the most high-end guys, I see an even greener zone than in the thriving relationships. They live in bliss - true excitement. I expect this can't be maintained perpetually and indefinitely (at least I haven't been able to), but when the guy lives in this peak, the wife seems to feel the full weight of dread on her shoulders and will put in whatever effort it takes to keep her man focused on her instead of the neighbor who's always trying to chat him up. As a man lives in this zone, his wife is drawn toward impressing him. She gravitates toward him, not toward any status quo.

CAVEAT: In this particular story, (sorry Bob) Jane didn't start off as a very attractive woman (though she got there by the end), so it's not like she had several Chads sweeping in to steal her away while Bob was just getting going. If that had been the case, she may have stayed in the "I'm better off just divorcing him" phase much longer - or actually have gone through with it. Again, you can't always predict how a woman will act at any given time, though there are certainly broad trends that are generally reliable.


CONTEXT

It's important to note that the entire context of viewing this graph is looking at the man's attractiveness, value, improvements, etc. as the decisive factor of his own ability to achieve sexual and relational satisfaction - whether with his wife or otherwise. If Jane wouldn't have responded this way for Bob, a litany of other women likely would have.

In that sense, while we use the man's status on two of these axes as the premise for everything, the colors show generally how women are likely to respond - not a predictor of how Jane specifically should be expected to respond (no covert contracts). So, you can think of this graph as a picture of female sexuality.

For the mathematically inclined, you're welcome to imagine the colors as a topographical indication on a third axis sticking into or out of the page as the general "female" variable - I just thought it'd be easier to interpret this in terms of color than a 3-dimensional graph (which would have taken far more effort to figure out how to do than would be worthwhile). But the picture would be far more complete with an into/out of the page dynamic happening in this hole process.


EXTENDING THE GRAPH

You'll note that I extended the "fuzzies" section beyond the basic square. This is because you can always add more fuzzies to a relationship ... but after a certain point it forces attraction downward.

The further away you get, the less sexually interested the woman becomes and ultimately couldn't care less about the man.


GRAY ZONES

It's interesting to note that there are two extremes in the gray zone:

  • Extremely attractive people with no depth to the relationship. These are your CEOs, biker gang leaders, and meat heads at the gym. The woman really has no long-term interest in the guy, but somehow she's in his bed for years and years. She's not going anywhere. She knows she doesn't love him, but the sex is too good - how could she leave it? They have reached a status quo - albeit not an ideal one, but it's comfortable enough to live in.

  • Then there's the supreme beta bux. The guy who isn't attractive at all, but will do anything and everything for his wife. She wants a back rub? There he is. A new house they can't afford? He'll make it happen somehow. Her friend has a cute puppy? He gets her a cuter one. There are water spots at the bottom of the sink after he finished the dishes? "Don't worry honey, I'll dry them up so you don't have to see them anymore." She's not going anywhere, but she's certainly unfulfilled. Again, not an ideal status quo, but one she's willing to live with.

Between the extremes are areas where a guy sacrifices a bit in one area, but makes up for it in another.


CAPS

Now, I hear some guys complain that they're not naturally attractive, therefore they must be doomed. "Black pill ... yadda yadda ... I hate women." Suppose even with all the alpha confidence, amused mastery, etc., he still caps out at about a 7 on the attraction scale. You'll note that it's unlikely the 7 will ever have to worry about divorce ... just remember that these rankings are perspective-based - a 7 to the girl at the bar might still be a 4 to his wife if he's not gaming and attracting her the same way.

What hope does he have for a successful marriage once he's hit his attractiveness peak? He'll never be as attractive as Chad. Of course, most Chads don't give her the fuzzies. So, the 7 becomes an oak. Instead of relying on his attractiveness (A-game) to maintain a healthy marriage, he ups his B-game and finds himself in the green, where his wife gravitates toward him and her default position is to improve herself for him rather than rest in the neutral gray zone.

Note that the "fuzzies" he improves here are not about serving or pedestalizing her, as that would actually decrease his attraction down from a 7. Instead, it is about passing comfort tests and decorating the interior of his frame to be a desirable place that any woman would want to live in, rather than steel and barbed wire that make up the border.

The same is true in the reverse. Some guys just lack the capacity to build a comfortable frame. Comfort tests aren't natural for them. They might hit a 7 and peak there. What's he to do? Up his attractiveness game.

A balanced guy will have a steady pace moving from phase to phase, but if a guy is imbalanced, he has to put an incredible amount of work on his strong point to make up for a mild/moderate lacking in his weaker aspect.


GREEN-ORANGE REVERSAL

It's also interesting that there is green on the "unhappy" half of the graph and orange on the "happy" half. Shouldn't all the orange be on the unhappy side and all the green on the happy side? Why would a woman start responding positively to her man when she's unhappy and respond negatively after he's improved?

That's the whole point of the gravitational centers. When she's unhappy, but has hope, she gets in the game. When she's happy, but thinks even more happiness isn't worth the effort (usually because she can't visualize it or doesn't believe the improvements will last), she pulls away.

This confounds lots of men I meet with who saw some early gains in their sex life, but then realize that continued improvement was counter-productive. I believe this is why.


ANOMALIES

Now, there's actually an updated version of the graph for you to enjoy: right here. I add 3 significant zones.

BROWN - The brown zone is the murky area where about 95% of men live. They're not elephant-man ugly, but far from attractive. They make up for it by being good beta-bux to their woman, but aren't perfect. That big brown hole is your average guy. It's not a great place to live, but I guess "not great" describes the average marriage today anyway. Most women really don't like having sex with a guy in this zone - and might even say it's painful to have to deal with him there, which is why these types of guys face constant rejection from their wife.

CENTER PINK - This is the "sweet spot" for women. Whereas men most often live in the brown zone, married women are most comfortable living in the pink zone - leaning slightly more toward the attractive end of the spectrum, but overall not seeing a compelling need to supremely excel on either axis. And why would they? By being average, they can already get whatever they want from most men. Of course, they don't want to slack too much either, as that would compromise the social advantage they have and their ability to find another man easily if her husband does turn out to be a flop. It's not a sexual peak for them, but it's a comfortable place for them to be all the same. Nevertheless, most guys seem to think women should be sexually excited to be in this "normal" zone, and it just doesn't work like that.

What zone on the graph is most likely to get a woman sexually excited? ...

UPPER PINK - This is the exciting place for women and where sex happens most for them. For most women, this really is their peak sexual place on the graph. They can't resist a guy who's extremely attractive, even if he's pretty low on the fuzzies axis. One night stands, bar hook-ups, the CC - it's all because of this particular zone for women. But even within this zone, stroking her feelz even a little bit has more impact than that extra bit of attraction, so I marked off the right-most section of that pink area as the best spot even within that zone.

Enjoy, fellas!