The Chronology Of Masculine Fail
A recent and soon-to-be legendary post from Rollo over at the Rational Male blog (link below) described how a young woman was frustrated that men just don’t “get it”. She was upset that men don’t understand how to deal with women. Translated – women want to be dominated but can’t tell men to do this because it’s so politically incorrect and because of this impossible dilemma:
If a woman has to tell you she wants you to be dominant – and you do it – you are still doing what you are told which automatically means that you are not dominant and that you don’t “get it”.
I call this Solomon’s Dominance Dilemma because he’s the Rollo commenter who stated it. I added a couple of points.
This leads to a man’s frustration with women. Consider this quote from that same blog post:
If she’d just tell me what I have to do to make her love me, I’d do it!
When I was married, I remember actually saying almost those exact words in a rage of frustration and confusion.
She can’t tell you for two reasons:
1. She doesn’t understand her need to be dominated.
2. See Solomon’s Dominance Dilemma, above.
So why is it that men don’t “get it”? Here’s the chronology to the masculine fail:
1. A man is born into this world and into a female dominated household. His mother is either single or is the dominant adult in the family.
2. His formative years are spent trying to appease mother and his always-female teachers. Masculine dominance is viewed by a feminized society as dangerous so through propaganda and/or drugs, the young fellow is controlled and forced into non-masculine behaviors and characteristics. There are no strong male figures in his life to balance this.
3. Puberty hits, he treats the girls around him just as he treated his mother and his female teachers. He subordinates himself to them. There are still no strong male figures in his life to instruct him in the ways of girls.
4. His adult sexual and romantic life is frustrating, confusing, and completely unfulfilled. Of course, if he discovers the Manosphere, he might learn the truth about women and turn things around.
With so many guys not understanding that women want to be dominated, is it any wonder why 50 Shades of Gray is currently the most widely read book in the English language? Of course, women won’t say in words they want to be dominated, their collective sexual arousal over the scenes in that book are their actions showing their desire to be dominated.
What’s this? Actions over words? lulz.
Standard disclaimer – being dominant is not being domineering. Those are different things entirely. If you don’t know the difference, read every post in my blog, twice.
But here’s the ultimate frustration: the level of dominance that a woman requires constantly changes and too many men don’t have the ability to gauge that level.
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Rational Male
The Private Man 
The Medium IS the Message.
https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/the-medium-is-the-message/
Standard disclaimer – being dominant is not being domineering. Those are different things entirely. If you don’t know the difference, read every post in my blog, twice.
Every time I read this disclaimer (seen it elsewhere), I think “Beta cringe”. It seems to reflect an internalization of the “male dominance bad” meme, expressed through the compulsive need to say “of course, I’m not actually talking about any sort of behavior that anyone might disapprove of”.
It’s simple: Men lead, women follow.
Dominance inspires a woman to follow a man’s lead. Domineering will inspire a woman’s rebellion, covert or overt.
Remember that I’m a writer and so this is all about how words have connotations.
The fact that most women can’t tell the difference (see also Empowyred Womyn Behavyng Obnoxyously) is part of it, too:
1. The overt suggestion that a man dominate inspires blind panic that he will instead be domineering. An assumption, even.
2. Domineering jerks get loads of attention because (a) one gets mistaken for the other, at least at first, and (b) it’s as close to being decently led as many women can get.
Eh. Sort of. I repeatedly asked my ex-husband for rough sex where he was dominant, and I was subordinate. It made him feel weird, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. That was super emasculating. When I asked my current husband to dominate me in the bedroom, he was concerned that he was being disrespectful to me, but was willing to give it a try. He quickly found that we both got off on it, and his natural leadership tendencies kicked in, at least in the bedroom. Win/win. His dominance was in no way diminished by his underlying desire to treat me with respect and affection, in fact, it was enhanced. So, Solomon’s point isn’t necessarily valid, from my perspective.
The problem for women is that it’s really hard to ask a man to be more dominant. We worry about what you will think of us. If I tell a man that I really want him to shove my head down to his crotch or smack my ass…what perception will he have of me, sexually? And, a lot of women aren’t sexually experienced enough to even know what they want, much less articulate it. I have no idea what I must have sounded like begging my ex to dominate me, because I had no language for the concept.
Outside of the bedroom, I am a pretty dominant chick, by nature. I handle my business just fine, and I don’t want to be treated like some kind of delicate little flower, but I want to be with someone who handles his business equally well. I want to be able to respect him and trust him with decisions about our joint affairs. It’s not about acting dominant, necessarily, it’s about being a competent, take-charge kind of person. It’s not about presenting some kind of machismo or pseudo-dominant front, it’s more about demonstrating competence in leadership so that I can relax and trust in that person’s effective leadership. My ex couldn’t be dominant in the bedroom, but he tried to be the dominant partner in our marriage. I allowed it for a long time, but the problem was that he sucked at it. He didn’t pay bills on time, he couldn’t hold down a job, he was an ineffectual parent, and he failed to be supportive of me on a personal level and treated me badly. I lost trust in his competence as a leader, much like soldiers in the field might lose trust in the decision-making of an inept commander, and eventually rejected his dominance as hollow posturing.
If you want a partner to accept you as a leader in your relationship, it’s not enough to have a penis. You have to be a good leader, and all that entails. If other men won’t follow your leadership, why should your romantic partner?
I think the overall message is about frame, not just one component of being dominate as in the bedroom. When women get the messaging that it’s okay to compete with men, and “girrl ” power and careerist/independent…girl, it distorts the balance of things…when looked at m/f as an equal partnership in today’s society, we (men) are running up agaist constant headwind, idealizations and it get’s old. And, as noted by PM, we’re raised to acquiesce, born into a fem-centric agenda.
I think for some men, and I at one time in my past was one of those men, it’s hard to cone to grips that women actually want sex. As a teen growing into a young adult man in the last decade, I’m 25 now, my relationshps with women were abysmal. But one of the biggest reasons for that was not necessairly lack of game, as much as it was a complete inability to realize that women even liked sex. I was more or less raised to believe that sex was something a women would give a man whome she truly and deeply loved and not before. Only in that context did I believe that a women might sort of not hate sex.
Needless to say there is more to this story, but I won’t get into it in a comment here. My point is this if it was hard for me to even accept that women liked sex, and even after finding like the information on this site I still didn’t quite believe women liked sex, then for other men who didn’t change their views early on like I did I think it could be even harder to for them to accept that women like sex, none the less rough sex.
Thankfully my relationships with women are now enjoyable and fullilling. But not because anything I was told as a young man helped.
“If a woman has to tell you she wants you to be dominant – and you do it – you are still doing what you are told which automatically means that you are not dominant and that you don’t “get it”.”
and if you don’t ask her, it’s rape.
I realize that adding the 50 Shades of Gray reference at the bottom of the post gave my readers the impression that I was mostly referring to sexual dominance in a relationship. That was my fault. I am referring to dominance in the whole relationship, not just the sexual part of one.
In my experience, step 1 may not even be necessary. I was born in a solid, two-parent home. My mom is a strong woman, but she stayed at home to raise us, and my dad was clearly in charge. As traditional a “wait until your father gets home” environment as you’ll find. Yet somehow I grew up with a full-blown case of White Knightitude. My mom even tried to counter it once: some woman was in the news for something immoral, and I said something about “that lady on TV,” and she almost angrily said, “She’s not a lady.” When I tried to argue, she made it clear that being a lady requires more than simple womanhood, but the lesson was entirely wasted on me.
By the time I was out on my own, I had women on so high a pedestal I couldn’t see the top. Friends would tell me, “Dude, she’s a golddigging psycho,” and I’d always have an excuse for her. One time, when I was maybe 8-10 years old, my friends grabbed the girl I had a crush on and held her down so I could give her a birthday kiss. I refused, and I still remember how righteous I felt, doing the Right Thing, and how sure I was that she’d appreciate my reserve. (Yeah, “precocious” would be an understatement.) Of course, now I realize she would have loved it, and may have even arranged the whole thing.
So I’m really not sure where it comes from. We didn’t even have a TV in those years, so I didn’t learn it there. I’m sure I got a dose from teachers and books, but I don’t know if I can blame it all on them. I think, sad to say, a lot of it is just who I was and how I thought the world should work, with virtuous Knights and wholesome Princesses. It wasn’t until my thirties that I got a dose of the red pill and started to realize that most women don’t even want to be princesses — or more specifically, they want to blossom into a Princess after taming (and being tamed by) their Knave and turning him into a Knight.
Im the same way. Just thought that women wanted to be equals and should be treated as equals. Women are walking contradictions. The most important one is that they want to be treated by an equal by a man who is better than her.
@ NMH
There’s a male equivallent. Deep down, I suspect that men want to love women who are better than them in other ways. More cheerful, kind, more forgiving, more spiritual…..
I think I have to agree with you here, JV.
I can relate to te last two posts. My dad was clearly in charge of the house but I still held women on a high pedestal. Maybe because I didn’t bang many chiks in high school. Or maybe it’s the media( including porn). Red pill repulsed me at first but now I am all red pill. Kinda hate women sometimes. Still long way to go I guess.
“But here’s the ultimate frustration: the level of dominance that a woman requires constantly changes and too many men don’t have the ability to gauge that level.”
Potential answer: Her temporary craving for dominance and-or leadership can be gauged by the proportion of her response per her environment.
So if she’s making a fuss over nothing, she’s trying to invoke drama and provoke dominance (respond with Game/Alpha a la Heartiste). If she’s making a fuss over something important, all is well (respond with leadership/Alpha a la Athol Kay). If she’s not making a fuss and nothing’s going on, all is well (except she might get bored- maybe respond with novelty?). If she’s not making a fuss and she should be, there’s probably a rapport issue (respond with Beta a la Athol Kay).
What do you think? If nothing else, it would fit all neat and tidy into an infographic.
Maybe we need a pie chart? Or a Venn diagram? Or what about a flow chart so that men can ensure that after they’ve evaluated the situation with a list of appropriate questions to ascertain and identify which category she falls into (fuss v no fuss, valid fuss v invalid fuss etc) it can then direct them to the appropriate action to take ( aplha athol v beta athol). It would need a annex though with further explanations e.g how to identify if she’s bored, or she’s making a fuss over nothing, so maybe a computer programme would be better? 😀
Sorry. Its just such a blokey way of thinking about things I couldn’t help myself 🙂
We’re blokes. That’s how we think about life and relationships. But Fi, we know you like the blokes so your tongue and cheek comment might be given a wry smile.
State transition diagram. Markov chain.
Wow that’s like my life so far.
This is good but I also don’t think step 1 is necessary. How about a case where the father was not only dominant but domineering? To the point of always making the mother (and kids) feel insecure and threatened. The boy would then develop disgust for his father and, unable to tell dominant from bully, would treat all women just like he would have liked his mother to be treated.
But we know that children more often than not replcate their parents behaviours when they grow up, no matter how much they dislike it when young. That’s why dysfunctional upringing runs on from one generation to another. A man who doesn’t treat his wife with any respect will raise sons to do the same thing, and daughters to expect to be treated like that. And in the daughters cases they won’t recognise warning signs in men they meet that would have other women running for the hills, and they’ll tend to end up in another dysfunctional relationship and not even be aware they are as for them its normal.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with red pill, its just men trying to make themselves more attractive to women. I think where it doesn’t work though is when men think it compensates for other character flaws. At the end of the day nobody – man or woman – likes someone who is unpleasant to be around or treats them badly. And women who do like it should be avoided as there is something wrong with them and no good will come of it.
This is well said, especially the “at the end of the day nobody…likes someone unpleasant to be around or treats them badly” because it’s universal.
Great point Fi. When I first meet a women, I try to get into her childhood as soon as I can so I know what I’m working with. In a subtle way, I try to find out what the father was like. What the dynamic was between the mother and father. If there were siblings, what the relationship dynamic was there. It always amazes me what info women will free up right from the start. I’ve done this for many years. Now I can see the patterns in women. A couple stories from their childhood and teen years and I know exactly what I’m dealing with.
And like you mentioned about them not even being aware that they’re in dysfunctional relationships, I find that to be totally true as well. Because when I get into their adult dating life, they tell me a couple stories of their failed relationships and it syncs right up to what happened in their childhood. And they either can’t put two and two together or they can, but have no desire to try to work on their issues. And that’s why they go from one bad relationship to the next.
I think also that at that point well balanced and well adjusted people go “eek,lunatic alert” and get out at an early stage. The ones who are also dysfunctional don’t see the pattern and stay and then the cycle repeats. However I think a lot of people prefer to blame other folk then ask how they contributed to things going wrong.
I agree. People are always quick to point the finger instead of looking inward. They’re afraid what they’ll come accorss.
Across:)
DFP: This is so damn true. The thing that men should realize is that the same holds true for them. Once I started dealing with my childhood issues, I started recognizing the same kinds of patterns in men I encountered. Their behavior became much more predictable and transparent to me, and I knew when they had unresolved issues that were too much for me to handle. The old saying is that until you learn from your mistakes, you keep repeating them—it is so true in terms of romantic relationships.
Posters on dating blogs, whether here or elsewhere, are generally unaware of the amount of broadcasting they do about their personal and unresolved issues.
It seems to me that a lot of the red pill men have unresolved issues with women; some of those issues date back to failed marriages or into their childhood. Until they come to grips with those unresolved issues, they will keep repeating the same patterns. They may become more adept at seducing women, but the women they choose to seduce will be those who serve to reinforce the RPM’s innate paradigms about women that come from their old baggage. I’ve said this on Moxie’s blog, but it is equally true here: If all the people you date are bitches/assholes, the problem isn’t them…it’s you. You are the one who is attracted to bitches/assholes.
I think red pill can be helpful, but when I see red pill men making the same recurrent mistakes with women (in other words, choosing poorly over and over again), the issue isn’t dominance or female hamsters or any other excuse…it’s those poor choices.
I’m not throwing stones here, i lived that dream myself for many years. I chose poorly. I take 100% responsibility for choosing poorly. I did not remarry until I’d corrected those negative behavior patterns, and this time, I married someone worth marrying. They are out there. If RPM aren’t seeing them, it’s because their vision is impaired by their issues.
This!
Another excellent point. People need to look to their past or the past of the person to seeing. They might not find all the answers. But at least they can get some insight on the situation. Maybe the problem is there is some fear involved in doing that???
DPF,
It is hard and painful to confront your personal demons, to acknowledge your own culpability in your circumstances, and to change. In my case, I had to face the thing I was most afraid of (being alone forever), and accept that being alone was a better option than continuing to choose abuse. It’s much easier to get progressively more bitter and blame everyone but yourself.
DFP. I’m not sure its fear as such. I tend to think people who are prepared to look at their contribution to anything, going in any direction (not just romantic relationships) are, in my opinion, open minded (prepared to consider that there are other ways of looking at things), have higher self esteem (they don’t have to spend all their time defending themselves to other people and themselves) and recognise cause and effect. In my experience people who run into lots of conflict in romantic relationships, do the same with people they work with and their neighbours etc, or else have very few relationships with other people. The same personal qualities are required for all relationships, and if you haven’t got them in one area of your life you probably don’t demonstrate them in other areas either. In my opinion. For what it’s worth. 🙂
You make it sound that red pill men are flawed and doomed by their history as a child (are you Suze Orman?) I think this is largely untrue. The problems in LTR’s are not from within red-pill men, they for the most part come about by dealing with the problems WITHIN THE WOMEN that women and our society refuse to acknowledge are a problem. Most American women have one or more of these problems, that are unattractive to men in a LTR: (1) overweight or obese (2) difficult personality or a personality disorder (3) long list of previous sex partners and STD’s, and a basic inability to pair bond even with a teddy bear. Men respond with manipulations like game not out of childhood issues but as a way to cope with the ever increasing amount of garbage in the western female personality/appearance.
Yes, there’s a chronology of masculine and feminine fail.
Evo psych takes a good hard look at the nature aspect. But, we also have to be willing to look at the nurture aspect. And fix what needs fixing.
NMH:
In the kindest possible way, if all of the women that you want are rejecting you, it still comes back to you, because you are doing the choosing.
Let me put it like this…life isn’t fair. I worked for many years with a client population who were dealt shitty hands…they had fathers in prison; their moms were crackheads and prostitutes; their home lives were chaotic, violent, dirty and desperate; their schools were failing and filthy. None of those things are fair.
But at some point, you still have to accept the responsibility for your own choices and the results of those choices. Not every woman is Cindy Crawford, not every man is Jason Statham. Some of us are short, fat, shy and awkward.
But…our circumstances are still largely determined by our own personal choices. I regularly see fat homely people living satisfying lives with a person who adores them.
Why don’t you want the women who might want you and treat you well?
Harsh words, but lots of truths.
The thing about Red Pill wisdom and practicing successful Charisma is that men see the real disincentives to marriage/LTR and also have the ability to be with women relatively easily. What some might call a string of “failed” relationships, a Red Pill guy might perceive the situation as a string of dames he had fun with and there are others lined up. Evaluating relationship success all depends on the relationship goals of the man in question.
Ye-e-e-s. But I think most people grow out of chasing down people of the opposite sex for flings, if they ever did it, and decide they would like to meet someone they can share more of their life with. I sort of think those that don’t demonstrate that there’s something wrong with them. Like people who don’t have friends, only acquaintances.
This is fundamentally true for most guys but only in the longer view of things. I’m thinking of a 30-something guy who is recently divorced and wants to enjoy himself in the dating scene but will eventually (it might take a decade or two) find a woman to enter his life in a committed relationship.
Marriage can be risky for any financially successful person (male or female). It’s certainly not something to be entered into lightly by either gender. I had to pay my ex-husband tens of thousands of dollars in the divorce settlement because Florida is a shared property state, and also ended up paying for the majority of my kids’ costs over the years, because I made more money (and I am not wealthy). My daughter started college this week at USF, and my ex hasn’t contributed a single penny to her college education, and probably never will.
However, statistically speaking, the odds are slightly tilted in favor of both parties benefitting financially from marriage (since more marriages still succeed than fail, and the success rate for marriage is significantly higher for college-educated adult professionals who earn more than 50k a year). Marriage is one of the best ways to increase your overall wealth (as a couple) and keep more of it–if you can work at staying married.
My husband and I both have a higher standard of living as a married couple than we did as singles…our joint income and shared living expenses means a greater percentage of disposable income.
So, I don’t really share your gloomy perspective.
As far as having a string of failed relationships, every experience is something that hopefully increases our knowledge and wisdom, but do you feel like you have reached your maximum happiness level? Is your current lifestyle leading you where you wish to go?
Just because a relationship ends though doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ‘failed’ – it can just come to a natural conclusion if for example one or both people want different things. When I think of failed relationships I’m thinking of those where people fight or argue frequently, or behave badly to each other, or are abusive etc – just making each other unhappy while they are in the relationship.
As much as it pains me to say to “theprivateman”, Drew, after following your blog for the past 4 or 5 months, and finding inspiration in it and the comments of the viewers, I am deeply disappointed in what can be construed as begging for donations. In July in finished paying over $!80,000 in child support on my own and have racked up over 10k in IRS bills that I am paying on an installment plan. I have done this on my own and by all legal means will clean up my mess on my own. Is this red pill, handling your buisiness on your own, I hope it is. I am still working on my game with women, but I am proud to say I will handle my self created issue through my own hard work and inginuity and not ask others to help clean up my own mess, much like I won’t ask others to assist in a bad break up.or the poor tax choices I make. You have given me invaluable advice in regards to women that I am still endeavoring to to include in my daily life and change my ways. But please do not ask your readership to help clean up a mess that most of us have been through. When I come here I would like to continue to feel like a bunch of the fellas sitting down to unwind and bs about life. I love what you teach me about life and know that I have your back, but please don’t put the readers of your thoughts in a position where we are felt that we have to do for you, what which you know you can handle. Ron
I see it differently. While I might feel as you do if asking for donations was a regular occurence, I’ve gained enough value out of this blog over the years that I have no problem for paying what I consider a fair price for the knowledge/entertainment gained.
You could look at this like the following fictional scenario. If you attended a college and at the end of the course the lecturer said ‘Pay what you think the course was worth’, you might think this situation was more fair.
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Some women, myself included, are aware that feminism has created the awful phenomenon of the kow-towing male, and some of us are becoming aware of why it is unattractive and are actually looking for a man of strength. I fear, however, that most young women, that is women of marriagable age, are so cocooned around with the feminist lie that they don’t find out what they really need in a man until it is too late.
You might be interested in my take here:
http://www.anglocath.blogspot.it/2012/08/why-do-men-put-up-with-this-crap.html
Read some of it. Instead of proposing that women should women unilaterialy stop being difficult and bitchy, you propose that men should man up and knock them down when the misbehave.
Fuck that. Stop expecting us to improve you and grow up yourself. Little Brat.
…and you accuse women of behaving like children…
Excuse you.
If a man chooses not to correct a young GIRL than he is a poor father.
If a man chooses not to correct a wayward bitchy ADULT WOMAN, this doesn’t mean he is not being a man.
Its not the boyfriends job, that’s the parents job when the woman was a girl, and its all her own job to observe good behavior in society and adapt to it. To fail to do this suggests a narcasissim at best, or a personality disorder, which many western women have.
Men have better things to do than to waste time with this adult women who should know better, or should take the time to learn. Are you idiots?
Also, you DID accuse women of acting like children:”Women, like children in our time, behave badly because no one has the guts to teach them any better.”
If you feel entitled to be corrected by a man when you, as an adult woman, are bad, you can stuff it.
@NMH: Hear, hear. Hilary proposes to infantalize women further; NMH proposes that they should enter adulthood.
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I love reading your old posts – and then of course, it’s time for me to add my own comments – which I gladly do…
This hits home for me – as a man “of a certain age” – I grew up in a family with a Father that traveled Monday through Friday, a Mother that stayed home (until I entered school), and three older sisters. I’ve come to realize my father was more available than I thought, and was really the leader of our family – but it was my Mom and sisters that raised me.
I didn’t have the same problems about dating as some of the men – and once in college and my 20’s – I really could have as many dates and encounters as I wanted. But I didn’t think of it as “alpha” – it was just life (but I do admit, for most of it, I was a serial monogamist). My problems started once I got married, because that’s when the slide into “betahood” started. It only took about 5 or 6 years before I all the little side steps to “keep the peace” started taking their toll – on her attraction and my attention. I would never (and I mean never) cheat on my wife, so that meant become disinterested in sex (with her or anyone else). From there, add a couple of “risk taking” failures from a business perspective – and the constant noise from her about “how could you put your family at risk like that” – and the you get a fully, unattractive, angry, isolated, depressed, disillusioned Man that’s unattractive to his wife and a bewilderment to children.
So, for me, my 40’s sucked – sure, if a couple things go right instead of left – we are living the American dream. Instead, it went another direction. As I look to my 50’s – my goal is to get in shape, take care of myself, teach my kids “how the world really works”, be supportive to them and my friends and generally be more like the Man I was during my 20’s and 30’s. Loose the guilt, the hurt, the second-guessing and just realize that every experience you have is a learning experience.
But back to your point of the post…Men have to find their own way – sometimes they have people to show them, sometimes they don’t – but it is still up to them to do it. No matter what age.
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Nice post. Your 4 part chronology mirrors my life. Fortunately, I also found the manosphere and reclaimed my balls.
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