Case Study: I've been Red Pill for 9 years and my wife is horrible
That's why I came back
This is Billy. Billy, on paper, is a great catch. Billy is not, however, on paper. Billy is a man. A man has problems. Even Billy, a 6’3 38 year old 230 pound man with a 100 pound bench and a 300 pound squat. And a wife ten years his junior and a brand new baby.
This is where most guys are at. They aren’t completely hopeless. They have a few defects, none of which are deal breakers. This shouldn’t tell you that you have to be perfect. It tell me that these numbers and statistics don’t matter. Which makes sense. Back in the pick up days, we all knew that the only thing that mattered was how a woman felt about you. Her emotional state was the great equalizer. You could be fat, a drug addict, or homeless and it didn’t matter. If a woman emotionally resonated with you (read: hypergamy) then you were going to do better than the tall, lean, jacked wealthy man’s wife.
Since the 2000s when we were all doing this stuff, the idea has advanced to a simple adage: be attractive, don’t be unattractive. The issue is that most men are woefully unattractive. I don’t mean physically either. Be attractive encompassed all the physically attractive traits. I mean don’t be unattractive. Dishonesty is unattractive. Not lying to your woman, but lying to yourself.
And Billy’s first lie is in his mission.
Billy’s Batman Origin Story
Stats: 38yrs, 6’3”, 230lbs, 20% BF (body comp & navy) Fiancé 29yrs; engaged 8mo; together 6yrs, 1 kid - 1.5yrs
I strive to be the most capable and competent version of myself. To pursue my new business ventures with drive, focus, and consistency. To lead my family out of chaos to and create a better conventional environment I had growing up by being a strong, self-accountable male.
I found the Red Pill ~9 years ago and learned a lot. My life improved on all fronts, most notably, with women, and I rode the wave through to my current relationship. Through action and inaction, betatization by 1,000 cuts, acquiescing frame, generally being a faggot, and not STFU, I fucked myself up and so must rebuild the foundation. Regardless of who I’m with or what has happened, I am to blame for my current situation for doing shit half-assed and not actually incorporating the models, mindsets, and behaviors.
It’s been a little over a decade since doing Stronglifts, so I’ll work them in to see where I’m at. I’ve been seeing a Trainer three times a week for 6 years and do so to minimize time spent devising lifts. Out of the last 15 years, I’ve seen a trainer for 10 of them. I don’t enjoy putting workouts together and would rather pay for the expertise.
I gained roughly 15lbs after the baby was born and have lost 9lbs since. I added the treadmill waking to create a calorie deficit and will also reduce calorie intake.
My home life swings between a conventional loving home and chaos (70/30). Life has been especially chaotic since the baby turned 6 months old and my fiancé regained some freedom. The baby was unplanned though certainly not unwelcome and there were several occasions where I failed to STFU and provide comfort. Additionally, I reduced my social life due to her constant outbursts of “abandonment” and “not showing solidarity.” I think my failure to handle the comfort tests helped create the chaos I currently experience.
I try to limit my daughter’s exposure to the outbursts but have failed many times. My daughter is a truly wonderful addition to my life and it shames me greatly to lose self control or raise my voice in her presence. I have made progress in the last two weeks by intentionally STFU when the fiancé creates chaos and focusing my attention elsewhere.
I left the family business after 25 years. While the nature of the business allows me to work with the family, I no longer work for the family. This was a long time coming and I was willingly stuck in the family frame, sacrificing much for little to no reward. I’m now on my own and doing my own, related business ventures. Striking out on my own has been a source of relief as well as a large amount of good stress. This change alone has drastically improved my work product and family relationships. I have more time, energy, and no more shackles on this front.
My relationship with the fiancé is a shit show and it’s my fault. A Drunk Capital 2 with a healthy dash of Drunk Captain 1. I know this because I have allowed her current behaviors for years, ceding frame along the way instead maintaining who I was the first few years we were together. I’ve engaged in verbal diarrhea too many times over unacceptable behavior and boundary violations. What I’ve done on my own the last year to remedy things has failed, and is the reason why I’m back. A month ago, I reached at a point where I didn’t care about her, her feelings, or if the relationship survives.
An attempt at a serious discussion last week escalated to angry verbal diarrhea including things that can’t be taken back. I did a better job with STFU and engaging less but failed when she escalated. I decided at that point it was over in my head, and that I would throw myself into this process to fix myself and never end up in that situation again. If the relationship survives as a result, that’s nice. I’ll be the best father I can be regardless. I collected a few attorney contacts to discuss family law and child support.
Since this happened, sex has been 3 for 4 (1 for 2 initiated by me, 2 by her that were hot monkey sex of first few years of dating; likely histrionic bonding IMO). Previous three weeks were 1 for 4, the 1 being father’s day.
Since then, she has been back to the sweet, submissive, and loving fiancé that I like and want in my life. I’ve stayed on the “it’s done” mental path and will continue focusing on the basics and not be lulled by any of the fiancé’s short term behavioral changes.
Pause
Praxeology Vol 4 is out and crushing it! field reports from guys who knew what they were doing, fell from grace, and learned to get their balls back. Follow alon, and see the practical application of Dread and Frame.
Ok Back
The Lie
I’ve been seeing a lot of guys trying to lay out their mission, their vision, or whatever you want to call it. I have trouble parsing all of them. Mostly because they don’t say anything. At best they allude to a vague feeling that has nothing to do with what they are actually doing in their life.
Take Billy. He claims to want himself capable and competent. What does that even mean? Where was he not capable? Where was he not competent? In his entire origin story the only place where he seemed to be lacking adequate skills is in his relationship management. He doesn’t mention his relationship until the very end, and all he says is that she’s an emotional cunt and he talks too much, seeks validation, and only knows how to shut up. It’s that stupid stoicism theme that peeks its head out on the Red Pill very couple months. Guys think that stoicism is about learning to take a punch without flinching.
Whinemoreplease and fuckMRP, two of my favorite guys in this space, had two separate essays talking about this.
Stoicism isn’t Red Pill. Just because some influencer on the Internet works out and won’t shut up about it doesn’t mean anything. Not to mention guys get it wrong to begin with. Stoicism is not about weathering whatever happens to you without flinching. Man was never meant to be the stone that has the world bouncing off him. He’s supposed to be the oak. Steadfast, reactive, not ambivalent.
The reason why is it creates a perverse reward structure. If your wife lashes out at you, and pregnant women, new moms, and cunts are prone to do that, by not reacting you delay your blow up. And once that cycle happens, you condition your woman to know that if she pushes hard enough, you will push back. Is it because she wants the emotional turmoil? Yes. Women need drama and chaos. For some reason they want it bad enough to do the stupidest things.
I tell the story of the loaf of bread in my workshops to the point it’s become a drinking game. My dog was able to jump onto the counter and if I leave food too close to the edge he swipes it off and eats it. One day he got into an entire loaf of bread. Since then, anytime he comes home after a walk he goes straight to the kitchen looking for a loaf of bread. 99 times out of 100 I have it far enough back. But the one time I forget resets and reinforces this cycle, and so he will never not look in the kitchen for a loaf of bread.
In this case, Billy crashing out is the loaf of bread, and stoicism is that 99 times he doesn’t leave it too close to the edge of the counter.
Back to the lie. Billy ends his mission with the desire to be strong and self-accountable. What does that even mean?
If he were accountable he would be accountable to his reinforcements. But he isn’t aware of them. I knew this was coming the moment he talked about being Red Pill for the last 9 years. There’s a lot of these types. They never engaged in anything, never did a field report, never did any work. They read and they watched and they consumed. They assumed they were smart enough to figure it out all in their head. It’s easier that way. No way to be wrong about things, no ego defense to address. Red Pill is literally a pill that you ingest and then be perfect.
And for a while, we can live the lie. When you’re single things are easy. If a girl gives you grief you can just leave. If a girl cops and attitude you can fuck someone else. It’s not until you decide to settle down that things matter. It’s definitely not until you have a kid with a girl and now you have a pressure point to leverage (I love my kid and want to be in her life)
And this is where Billy learned that he was lying to himself for the last 9 years. This is why, when Billy finally decided to do it for real, his mission statement is full of empty platitudes and container words full of nothing. This is why, when Billy had a chance to address his shortcomings, he decided to talk incessantly about his successes, like he’s trying to win an award for effort.
If you write your own field reports, perform OODA loops, and genuinely attempt to Red Pill,
A great exercise for you is to write a field report like this, take a day or two, then come back to it with fresh eyes. Look for tells. They aren’t hard. The easiest one is to see the actions, and see the declarations. Most of us will notice that the declarations avoid the actions. Too much hat not enough cattle. The other thing is not to see what you wrote, but to see what you neglected to write. Anything you minimized, distanced yourself from, or left out entirely are the biggest tells. These are the things you need to work on, and your ego is working hard to hide them from you.
Another, albeit smaller tell is in the container words. If you find yourself asking what something means, it’s usually because it doesn’t mean anything. ‘My life improved, notably with women’ is a meaningless statement. You can go from a virgin to getting laid in a decade and your life notably improved with women. ‘I must rebuild the foundation’ says nothing at all. What foundation? When I talk about the foundation, I’m talking about the Tetrahedron of Frame. It’s a specific mental model, categorizing all the mental models we have in this space in either a mental, physical, or intellectual silo, and above them is the vision, which comes out of all the work from the other pillars.
This is why every field report I post here sucks so bad. They start with the vision. They don’t know what a vision is, they have never had a vision. Most guys meander through life, taking whatever comes their way and not giving it a second thought. They aren’t living life. They are letting life happen to them. Billy is a perfect example. He didn’t want to have kids, he neglected to be in control of the birth control, which is an Iron fucking Rule or Tomassi
Had someone actually paid attention in the last 9 years of Red Pill, they would have known this. But he didn’t want kids, he had kids and wasn’t against it. I guarantee if you got him to write more about his past you’d see more examples of letting life happen to him. And this is ultimately his problem. He has no Frame. No boundaries. No ability to set expectations or have standards. He simply exists, and it’s good enough, until it isn’t. Is it any surprise that a meandering man has meandering goals?
