"Meet the ECs" is a featurette which we will run weekly, or as often as we can find volunteers among our endorsed contributors. It is a question-and-answer style interview which will give you a glimpse into the life of one of our endorsed members. The stories are anonymized, and provided for your benefit.

Awakening to Red Pill truth is a slow, painstaking process, and it can seem impossible to reach the levels of proficiency attained by our endorsed contributors. Our goal here is to remove the magic and mysticism of Red Pill success. Our endorsed members are not super-powered carbon-copy pussy wizards. Their lives are varied, their life experiences are different, their talents and interests are often dissimilar, and everything that they have achieved is also achievable by you, as long as you put in the work. These men are not heroes or role models, they are regular men who have learned how to live free.

Here is the story of one such regular man, /u/VasiliyZaitzev.

During the Blue Pill Days

Before you had your awakening, what were your aspirations in life and in love?

To be the master of my own white picket-fenced kingdom, with a dimepiece SAHM wife who cooked like Julia Child and fucked like Xaviera Hollander, and who produced for me two to four perfect, blonde, blue-eyed, preternaturally well-behaved children. IOW, the usual Deep Blue Haze. At night, after everyone was asleep, I would slip out and become a crime-fighting superhero. Oh, and there would be a dog. A golden retriever. Maybe a black lab. I also came of age in the 1980s when some of that was still possible.

What was your biggest Blue Pill illusion/delusion?

That true love existed. I watched my parents, who had Crazy, Storybook Love, mostly because my mother was 100% committed to being married, and thought, "I’m going to be GREAT at this."

Spoiler Alert: I was not great at this.

I was exactly what the women I wanted would want…once they hit the Epiphany Phase, which was profoundly not-useful at 18 and 20. I had regular girlfriends at uni, ofc, but I was in a house and on a sports team, so that wasn’t all that difficult to make happen. I did make a fuck ton of bluepill mistakes, though.

Transitioning

What was a significant life event that contributed to or led to your Red Pill awakening?

You have two choices in life as a man: Either complain that women go for assholes or be the asshole that women go for. So once results were not as expected, instead of being a “Nice Guy” and blaming women for their nature, I went Back to the Lab to see what worked and what didn’t, and observed what worked for other guys and what didn’t. I wasn’t ever going to be a pure “Chad”, so I learned game, and basically became a Game Jedi.

Red Pill Life

When was a moment where you realized you were on the other side?

Back in the early 90s when “coffee culture” was becoming a thing, I had a rotation of about 5 girls and there was one late night coffee/dessert place to go to finish an evening, and the guy who owned the place would see me come in with various women and, god bless him, he never said a word to me in front of them, but then I went in with a buddy once during the day, and he said: “DUDE! I have been DYING to ask you this….what is UP with you and all those girls?” So yeah, that was it. I was just being me, doing what I did, and didn’t particularly realize.

In my post-Awakening, when I embarked on a three-way relationship with a woman who went on to be a Playboy Playmate and her hottie roommate - which I accomplished by refusing to choose between them when they asked me to, and telling them I wanted them both - and realizing that I was kind of blasé about it. Sure it was nice, but I knew it was going to have a beginning, a middle and an end. That was the Other Side of the Next Mountain. Now I just levitate above mountains. I realize I sound like the guy who complains about how gigantic his cock is, so I’ll stop here, but any wisdom I have is the product of long and difficult experience, but to my TRPer brothers, it’s FREE.

How do you derive meaning and purpose for your own life?

I write, record and perform original music. You have to find something you really like, whether that “art” is music or painting or woodworking or gardening or French cooking and you do it. You move toward what glows for you, and then you define it and name it and show it to other people, and they see it in a way they hadn’t before. And then they teach you about their “art”.

Oh, and I help the Lost Boys of Reddit who wash up on our shores, after having survived a shipwreck in their lives. When I was young, there were older men who gave me guidance, so I pay it forward.

What are your aspirations in life and in love now that you have awoken?

I am currently living the life that I want, so I will keep doing it. I have geographic freedom within North America, when I want to go to Europe (my preferred vacation destination) I go. When I’m working from home, which a friend of mine refers to as "Stately Wayne Manor", if I want to chillax by my pool and have OLTR1 or some other girl come over and gargle my nutsack after the Monday Sales Call, I do it. If I want to grill up some meat before the Thursday Compliance Call, I do it. I have readily available sex with young, attractive, nubile women whose company I enjoy. Life is sweet.

As that relates to the general readership, my point is not “My life ROCKS and yours sucks” my point it “My life is awesome, because I made it that way, and yours can be, too.” Maybe guys can’t do exactly what I do, but they can do their own version of it, and “get over” in their own way. “If you can see it, you can be it,” etc.

What still challenges you?

I used to date a forensic psychologist – sort of like an FBI profiler; she actually did consulting work with the FBI – anyway, she would tell me about people we knew – that guy was cheating, that woman was a kleptomaniac – and every prediction she make came true, over time. So I was like “Do me!” and she basically said, “You are the most sane, grounded person I have ever met.” So my big failing is that I expect people to behave rationally. Really, advice I would give to young guys is get as much practical experience in psychology as you can. Not the bullshit they teach you, but real-world stuff. Most of what I do in business is really psychology.

Without being too specific, what industry do you work in? In what ways is Red Pill knowledge advantageous for you and your career?

I work in a hybrid legal/business position in a commodity trading shop. How is Red Pill knowledge advantageous to me in my career? I wrote the CorporateLand series about it. It can be found on the sidebar in askTRP.

What's an article, theory post, video, or other resource in the RP community/manosphere that really shifted your way of thinking?

I was basically a finished product when I got here. I did like the “Casino Metaphor”. Sort of the TRP version of the “Husband Store” joke.

I read a lot of Roissy/Heartiste early one - I like his writing style - and Rollo, Dalrock, WSP, and a couple of others. Even some Tucker Max, because back in the 00s there wasn't much around and he and I had some parallels.

What advice do you wish you'd had, or would you want to pass along to a man who is still waking up?

All the Good Stuff is in the "After Hours" and "Advice for Young Men" sections of CorporateLand. If I had a time machine, I would hop in it and go find my 15 year old self, explain to him that I was “future him” and hand him a print out of everything I ever posted on TRP. Oh, and also one of those “Back to the Future”-type sports almanacs. I’d also tell young me to get to NYC faster and also that a particular Suzie Sugartits wasn’t “just being friendly” she was 100% DTF, and to get on that shit.