Dread isn't what you think

It really is the biggest taboo for the most important thing

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I cannot stand watching guys talk about Dread on social media. There’s a huge, longitudinal body of work and experience that has evolved over a decade now and goes into the concept and it’s slowly becoming the butt of a Jerry Springer bravado laden joke. Never forget, underneath all the podcasts, all the talking heads talking tough, there is an army of poor bastards typing ‘Why won’t my wife fuck me?’ into Google and finding their way here.

I’d say we have to do better, but clowns are clowning just fine and can’t clown any harder.

“Bro, she burnt breakfast? Leave the bitch“ Never mind the divorce, your kids, the house, and the large amount of legal work involved in a divorce. She needs to be held accountable. You’re the fucking man amirite?

“Bro, if she doesn’t fuck you, go fuck 5 bitches and throw that shit in her face!“ Never mind the underlying issues that create infidelity or the psychological reasons guys can use it to nuke a marriage while other guys are able to do it with impunity. She needs that underlying threat that she will suck dick on command or you’ll be balls deep in her sister. You’re the fucking man, amitire?

Dread as a container word was here early. Old pick up guys would talk about it because they knew that desire came at the tail end of anxiety. Leaving an air of mystery about yourself would increase your sexlife: what you were doing, who you were doing it with, were there other girls? All these questions created a competition anxiety in women. If she wasn’t sleeping with you before she wasn’t sleeping with you now, but if she was sleeping with you before, she is definitely sleeping with you more. Is it manipulative, is it ethically wrong? Who cares, got laid. This isn’t’ what I am talking about though.

It took about 5 years before we could all even describe what Dread was for men in relationships or marriages. Everyone had an intuitive idea what it meant. Like all container words, we took a box, wrote Dread on it and filled it with wants, desires and dreams. No one had the same box but we were all on the same page.

Like I said before, it all started with ‘why won’t my wife fuck me?’ Everyone tried to solve that problem. Everyone hit the gym and cleaned up their diet. They started looking more attractive and got more frustrated when it didn’t get them laid. Guys started looking at Dr. Glover, Manuel Smith and Rollo Tomassi’s work and figuring out being attractive was only half the issue.

Guys were still extremely unattractive.

It turns out that throwing a sick pack and a better income on a validation seeking pussy who doesn’t stand up for himself and walks on eggshells because he’s afraid of his wifes emotions is just as celibate as any other husband in a dead bedroom. So everyone started working on those issues.

Healthy boundaries, high expectations, emotional independence and the personal value to command these things took focus. All together they branched off into the concept of Frame. It wasn’t easy or fast. It’s a constant struggle to have a man develop his mental point of origin when there’s drag from:

• newer members in your space preaching shitty ideas

• women attempting to shame men into never doing anything they don’t approve of

• a homelife full of people trying to talk guys out of their own best interests; and

• older members who are more interested in their own demagoguery than they are of the actual work involved.

If anything, I’m amazed any work got completed at all. A user who went by the name of Bluepilledprofessor tried to write a book on the subject. He fit it into a 12 step program and it was garbage. The first 4 steps were any basic self improvement program, the next 4 steps had merit but had a massive covert contract in them and the final 4 steps were hand waving at best, and revenge fantasy at worst.

Guys with usernames I reference in my content and are long gone have had heated disagreements about it. They have created lives that were wildly divergent, and eventually, a user who called himself JackTenOfHearts was able to parse out something coherent out of it.

7 years ago, we finally figured out what the fuck we were even talking about, what we were trying to accomplish, and how everything we were doing fit into a framework that just, worked.

Why Dread?

We talk a lot about Dread on MRP.

And while we have a lot of MRP Redditors with some great advice on Dread, I've found a lot of the conventional advice on Dread outside of MRP is limited at best, and misleading at worst. We tell everyone "sidebar reading, bro," yet Athol Kay (author of MMSLP) explicitly advises against Dread. Meanwhile, blogs like CH have posts like this. To call those suggestions "emotional abuse" is overblown, silly, and false. To call it "effective MRP advice" is also false. We are not going to be fixing fundamental problems in our marriage based on how often we do or do not turn off our cell phone. I hope this is not a controversial opinion here.

Despite my proclivity to cite a lot of armchair psychology in my comments, my professional background is actually in marketing. This is really the basis of my psychology knowledge - as you might imagine, it helps to understand how people think when you're trying to sell them shit. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized Dread Game was really just packaging a lot of very simple marketing concepts that I think pretty much anyone will be very familiar with.

What do we talk about when we talk about Dread?

My favorite definition for Dread is this: Dread is the opposite of being taken for granted

This is the best definition of Dread: Dread is the opposite of being taken for granted. It’s also what I would call a branch swing for male sensibilities. If you’re unfamiliar with the term a branch swing is a pejorative description of women when they are leaving their man. They don’t just leave, they find his replacement in the same way a monkey doesn’t let go of one branch in a tree while swinging to another one until he has the new brand in hand.

For men, both ideas merged and became dread. The male sensibilities meant that the branch was an olive brand. No one hated their wife or family, they love them or else they would just leave. But the constant need of validation from the one person that was supposed to matter created a paradox: the more you depended on your woman for that love the less likely you were to receive it.

I have a pithy saying ‘hate your woman, just a bit’ and this is largely where it comes from. Like a luxury good, it only has value when people think it’s unattainable. So instead of the wife being an unattainable good, you start to treat yourself as the unattainable good.

For any of you guys still struggling to unplug, I would encourage you to view Dread in this context. You are frustrated in your marriage because you feel you are being taken for granted. Being taken for granted is not a pleasant feeling. Generally in your life, when you've felt taken for granted, you just leave. At one point you probably had a girlfriend, a friend, or an employer who just seemed to be investing a lot less into their association with you than you were. Eventually, you'd get pissed off, and you'd leave. You'd break up with your girlfriend, you'd stop trying to make an effort to hang out with your friend, you'd quit your job and get another one.

There is very little need for Dread in a relationship when you can terminate it. You can simply conclude, "I'm not getting what I'm putting into this, so I'm going to stop doing it." It's that simple. The mere fact that you have this option usually inspires enough Dread for a functional relationship. People won't treat you shitty because they know you have the option to stop dealing with shitty people.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Archwinger had a great essay on Women acting shitty.

The entire point of a married version of the redpill is because men don’t want to leave their wives and families, at least not as a first option. Divorce sucks, and while the married red pill has never been pro marriage, it has always been anti divorce. If you don’t understand the difference, I don’t care.

The entirety of dread answers the question of what exists in a mans toolbox between living a life of quiet desperation and nuking your life and starting over. And in the next section I’ll show you why people fucking hate what that entails, but it’s some of the best ideas and strategies out there to answer that question.

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luxury brand cheating and operant conditioning? well …