No ones coming to save you.
Yeah. Platitudes. Great for tweets. Good fodder for YouTube videos, like and subscribe. They really aren’t, though. If anything, it’s a fundamental question that gets ignored by far too many, and the consequences are tragic. At best, a guy wastes a year or two of his life by role-playing his personal masculine fantasy. At worst, a guy puts himself into an acrimonious divorce court or professional work problems, possibly with substance abuse issues.
No, I’m not joking. I’ve met a lot of the guys that you see on the camera side of things, and I’ve talked to enough behind-the-scenes guys. Don’t kid yourself. This praxeology is triage. A lot of guys won’t make it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
So you’re not an idiot. You just want your wife to suck less. You are able to function socially, professionally, physically… it’s just that events that are often outside your control have come together to create a situation in which you’re unable to handle the informal hierarchies and relationships in your love life.
A wife gets some strange because she’s bored. A wife wants a divorce because she’s bored. A wife becomes a bitch because she can’t handle stress, and motherhood is stressful. The housing market crash of 2008 decimates your industry and you can’t find work, and your dutiful wife starts planning her exit. Or heaven forbid you get sick.
Most of this stuff isn’t your fault. Of course, by framing it as something to assign fault to is already part of the problem. Fault is for children and women. It’s for children because they are immature and don’t understand anything outside of actions and consequences. It’s for women because they have solipsism: everything in their life is filtered through a “what does this mean for me?” So they need everything to be someone else’s fault, or else they lose the approval of their social tribe. Even the stuff that is their fault, especially the stuff that’s their fault.
And it only works because people don’t want to hit children, and people want to fuck women and women prefer women to men and men usually prefer women to men. It’s a worldwide, collective morality that is not concerned with truth, only preference.
So the time you spend assigning fault to women is time wasted. This is the first convert contract. ‘If I can just establish that all this is her fault, then she will admit her fault, change her ways, and I’ll have a problem free life.’ The quintessential covert contract.
It plays out multiple ways. There’s the guys who think their wife is having an affair. They become Columbo. They put GPS trackers in her car, they do a forensic download of her text messages, they open her emails while she’s sleeping. Some go as far as to hire a private investigator to look for evidence. I’m not saying forensics has no use in the red pill space. Every tool has a use. What I am saying is that everyone is using the wrong tool for the wrong result, and using it improperly.
Because, what happens if you find evidence one way or the other? This is where the lie gets exposed. Your results are always fungible. They don’t have mathematical certainty to them. They can’t, they are human behavior. We have a fuzzy nature to us. So we fill the fuzz with our emotional hang-ups.
If you want to believe your wife is loyal and you’re just crazy, then you’ll filter the evidence through your want. If you believe it’s her fault your marriage is in the shitter and she’s a bitch and you’re perfect, then you’ll filter everything she does as if she’s sneaking a dick in the moment you turn your head.
And it is always wrong. You know she was sucking dick because she was at the grocery store five minutes longer than usual. She tells you that the lineup was long. You can’t believe the audacity that she has by lying to you so effectively. What’s the next step? Violence? Straight to jail. Retaliatory cheating? What exactly are you accomplishing here? Divorce? A lot of money to pay for an unearned confidence.
And even if she is, you’re still wrong. You assume that even though she was at the hotel for an hour when she said she was working late, then it’s probably the GPS malfunctioning, or she had to stop at the bathroom on the way home. You can tell how much of an investment a guy has in the lie by how strong and nonsensical the justifications are. Can you believe she has so many male friends? Well, the kids need a two-parent household or they will end up in stripper heels. She wouldn’t dare send your kids to a statistical certainty like that, so there’s got to be another answer. What’s the next step? More excuses? That self-respect will punish you in different ways, see the above section about substance abuse. Maybe you’ll take it out on the kids? I shouldn’t have to explain why that isn’t good. Take her on a vacation? Well, that will keep her on her toes… and her back.
So all of the top ten ways to turn your wife into your slut, keep that hoe loyal, and keep her on her toes won’t work. All the top ten traits to vet for to have a loyal wife: get the right church, no tattoos, a debt-to-income ratio of X, or a good father won’t work. They won’t work because we are people, and the best way we have to judge someone’s future behavior is by seeing their past behavior. And most people we meet haven’t shown us their past behavior, so we have to learn on the fly. And most people who would tell you about their past behavior are lying. The loyal wife with the controlling insecure husband up above, and the loyal husband with the cheating whore wife, also above, will tell you that they have the exact same woman. None of them are right.
Pause
Dread | Frame | Field Reports | fuccfiles | The Dog Walker | Softbone (coming soon)
What’s left?
You have people who lie. They lie to themselves, they lie to you, they ignore evidence or twist it to serve their emotional masters, and they treat everything like a child would. Nothing they do can be replicated, nothing they say can be trusted. So what can you do is the wrong question.
The real question is, what do you want?
I’m kind of embarrassed I spend so much time on that. What do you want should be the easiest question for people to answer. Even during my first in-person speech at a certain convention in Florida that shall remain nameless, I ran into the problem of how difficult it would be to have a man make decisions in his own life, based on his own wants.
It was 2017. I was laying out the barebones expectations of dread. I walked guys through the lack of a support network that would be there for them. No one will tell them how to live. No one would be on their side. It’s not that the world is evil, the world is indifferent, act accordingly. I went on for an hour describing in great detail why fault is for children and actions need direction. I paused at the end for questions and the first ones I received were:
Well, what should I use for my rite of passage to manhood?
How can I make my wife fuck me more?
I just realized 2017 was seven years ago after I had spent three years learning everything. I feel old. In three more years I’ll have been in this space longer than I was in the military. Sobering. Sad. Fuck.
Without fundamentals, everything is a wrong turn or an errant direction. It’s impossible to build a life of contentment when you’re doing everything for the wrong reasons. You can be the most amazing weightlifter in the world, but if you’re running marathons or lifting just to appease your ego, you won’t grow. You’ll only get injured.
Same thing here. A direction needs to give your actions focus, drive, and purpose. While it’s the most important thing you need, I don’t want to give you the impression that it has to be important, or long term, or even rational. A direction is a direction. A five-minute trip to the store, a cross-country journey to the promised land, a worldwide circumnavigation of the earth. I’ve done that, it was a blast and I’d never trade it for anything, nor would I do it again.
Before you start anything, you need to have an answer though. An answer has to come with a few caveats:
I cannot overtly manipulate anyone into doing what I want.
I cannot always have everything go my way.
And while I’m venturing into Taoism a bit, those wants are transient. You want them for as long as you want them, then when you no longer want them, they do away. That’s okay. I’m sure I can find a @rationalmale essay where he talks about proximal and ultimate outcomes and distal outcomes, but that’s fancy and I’m a sailor who cusses, fuck that.
Just know some things will make you happy today, proximal, and aren’t sustainable over the long term. Think about fucking 9s and 10s, bro. It’s the greatest thing ever. I fucked a stripper! I fucked a flight attendant! I had a threesome! I’ve done all three, and they were great, at the time, for a short time, and for telling others. If I had made my whole life about that, I’d be miserable today.
Distal outcomes are why I can be in my 40s and look great for my age. I’m actually amazed at how old people my age look. I’m a first-gen millennial and I feel like Blade, a Redditor who doesn’t burn in the sunlight, a millennial who understands and appreciates zoomer humor. There’s some assholes online who built brands off their personal fountain of youth. A few actually, the liver kind and that San Francisco prick who drinks the blood of his children or something. I’d be miserable in either of their life-maxxing scenarios.
So I want the great sex life. Then I get it and want something else. The human condition is a continual series of wanting more and different. So I chose novelty, and that was great, for a while. Unending novelty is how we got Diddy parties and a RICO lawsuit.
Then there’s the other side. The constant yearning for a wife and as many kids as you can punch out of the fuck hole. Nothing solves the problems of want worse than the solutions of need. A wife with nine kids needs you, you think. My friend and peer Tanner Guzy already answered how well that works. It’s the same proximal goal, only it sounds better on paper. I think he got his divorce while his wife was pregnant with their fifth. He had the right church, the right wife (she’s a lovely person, cheeky, pleasant, really good), and the right man (he’s also a lovely person, kind, patient, an honest man).
What do you want?
This brings me back to the Red Pill. It sounds cliché, but it really isn’t something you can just spit out after chewing. You’re either all in, or you’re not. This isn’t me being theatrical. It’s not some esoteric secret ideology, it’s a fundamentally different way of looking at life.
I can’t accept that people lie to themselves as a way to better lie to you, that people look out for their own self-interest and it can be at the expense of your own if you let them, that this only happens because you let it, and that by being adequately selfish you can overcome and generally avoid all this horseshit. I can’t accept all this, learn the mental models from this space, and then one day decide to just forget.
It’s not magic. It’s that I was retarded and have chosen not to be. Sometimes you can be retarded. Things go well, you’re in the right place, and for a while you can win while having the stupidest ideas in the world. Many attractive and successful men are pushing the envelope on how stupid you can be and still thrive. Elon Musk, for all his successes, is a retard. He’s autistic, emotional, flippant, naive, and he’s the richest man on earth. Take away that money and you have Old Dirty Bastard, a man with a successful music career cashing welfare cheques for his 13 kids. Take away the talent and you have the weed dealer from your hometown who knocked up your baby momma again.
“Be like Elon” isn’t good advice. It’s hoping the gods bring you manna for your sacrifice to the retard god.
This praxeology is a system for discovering how the unexceptional can thrive without relying on the exception. This includes:
Nice Guy behaviors
Assertiveness
Selfishness
OODA loops for human behavior
Game
Frame
Dread for navigating a sexless marriage
Etc.
It’s a series of stories we have iterated over time and through many people. The ones that work more often are shared, and the ones that don’t work are forgotten. Over time, we build a list of stories, aka mental models, that allow us to apply our biological decision-making for better outcomes. If you’re rich enough that they don’t apply, great. They apply when you have no guardrails.
So I’ll end with this, then a simple case study.
Case Study: What Billy Wants
Here’s the wants from a list of field reports. I’ve taken the most recent examples from various red-pilled spaces. Some are old, some are new. After reading all this, tell me what you notice.
Stats: 6’4”, 103 kg, 34 years old, divorced, 2 kids co-parenting
Lifts: Bench press 100 kg × 5, unilateral Bulgarian squats 50 kg × 8, chin-ups bodyweight × 12, +20 kg × 3, overhead press 60 kg × 5
What do I want / Vision: Become a congruent and integrated man
Mission: Regain self-respect and become a master of discipline.
Stats: 37 years old, 6’0”, 207 lbs, 25–30% body fat. Married 8 years, together 18 years. Kids: 2 and 6.
Mission: Lead my family and be the best version of myself.
Stats: Late 40s, married 15+ years, 1 kid (teenager), 188 cm (6’2”), 90 kg (198 lbs, 7-day average), body fat 19–20% (approx.)
Lifts:
Squat: 90 kg (198 lbs) × 8
Deadlift: 90 kg (198 lbs) × 10
Bench press: 60 kg (132 lbs) × 8
Mission:
To be committed to live as a free, self-led man. A man that has his shit together and that fucks. A man who has options and gives from a position of abundance. Seeking and accepting truth, even when it’s harsh. Taking full responsibility for my choices, my body, and my mind. Earning my strength and self-defining my value. Governing myself with reason and discipline, and eliminating dependence where possible. Building, protecting, and improving myself first, then the world around me. I will not complain about the world as it is; I will sharpen myself to meet it as it comes.
Stats: 25 years old, 5’9”, 158 lbs, fit. 3-year long-term relationship (promoted from plate, not living together yet).
Read No More Mr. Nice Guy, When I Say No I Feel Guilty, The Manipulated Man, The Selfish Path to Romance, The Book of Pook, and some others. Reading Praxeology Volume 1.
Lifts (for reps): Romanian deadlift 230 lbs, bench press 185 lbs, overhead press 85 lbs. Squats substituted for other exercises to take care of my knees.
The bulk is getting some results finally. Family told me I’m getting too big and need to slow down, yeah, right. It’s just the beginning.
Long-term goals for my relationship:
Assess if I want this woman to eventually be the mother of my children.
If no, exit. If yes, to become the best vessel for a great relationship as I can until then.
The plan: Moving in together and seeing what real life together looks like instead of seeing each other once a week.
Last week, Horns pointed out that I should try actually doing some shit instead of talking about it. This has been a lifelong problem for me. I love analyzing, prepping, and never stepping into the arena. It’s also something that I really don’t respect about myself. So, for the last week my focus was:
Shut the fuck up
Lift
Do what I want
Take responsibility for my own mood
Stats: 35 years old, 5'8", 161.8 lbs, body fat 19.8% (bioimpedance scale)
Married: 7 years, together 9 years, two kids (5 and 3)
Lifts (5×5):
Bench press: 97.5 lbs
Squat: 200 lbs
Deadlift (1×5): 210 lbs
Mission:
Work in progress. Be independent and physically and mentally resilient. Be self-aware and honest. Read, lift, shut the fuck up.
OYS 56
Mid-30s, 190 cm, 88.0 kg, married three years, together 15+ years, no kids
Routine: ABC split, 3× per week (A: legs/hybrid, B: pull, C: push/hybrid)
Body fat: 18.9% (Navy method)
Stats in kg:
Bench press flat: 67.5
Dumbbell squeeze press: 15
Chest fly machine: 61
Cable bicep curls: 18
Cable tricep pushdown: 18
Arnold press: 12.5
Hanging knee raises: 10
Iso-lateral pull: 27.5
Kettlebell upright row: 14
Kettlebell lateral lift: 6
Dynamics / Sex:
Things are slowly improving. I notice my wife is more attracted to me recently, biting or touching me constantly.
Background:
34 years old, 5'7", 165 lbs. Married 8 years, together 14, 3 kids under the age of 7. Lurked in dead bedroom forums a couple years ago, found Dad Starting Over and made a few changes (no more choreplay, no more pouting about sex, started working out). Fixed myself enough to get my wife to agree to sex and was happy with that for a while, until I wasn’t. Typical nice guy entire marriage. Not sure how I ended up at Married Red Pill, been lurking a couple months, time to own my shit and get some accountability.
Mission:
Working on this. I want to be a man with his own internal validation, a man who fucks, who is confident, charismatic, and leads his wife and family, while seeking out his own passions and desires for this life.
Physical:
31 years old, married 5 years, 1 young daughter
Height: 6'0", bodyweight: 196 lbs
Bench press: 225 × 7
Overhead press: 135 × 5
Squat: 225 × 16
Two 4-mile runs per week
Reading (current): Iron John, Praxeology Volume 3, Married Alpha Primer
Read: No More Mr. Nice Guy, When I Say No I Feel Guilty, Rational Male, Praxeology Volumes 1 and 2, The Sixteen Muscles, Solitary Grounded Man, The Game, Practical Female Psychology, Mindful Masculinity Self Leadership Program, The Power of Now, The Untethered Soul, Psycho-Cybernetics
Mind:
Dancing monkey since 2023. Thought I was developing frame, increasing sexual market value, becoming less unattractive, becoming more attractive, etc. Sexual frequency and quality with my wife continued to rise with implementation of Married Red Pill mental models. Ran into frustration and resentment in the anger / 1000-foot tow rope phase. Did not praise or actively acknowledge my wife’s attempts to join in healthy activities. I was unable to be emotionally vulnerable and enjoy the sex for what it was. I was afraid of the validation of sex. I began to believe any outside validation was somehow wrong, resulting in the covert contract that if I am just self-validating enough, I won’t feel any pain and everything will go my way.
I was able to support this fantasy world for a while, building lofty goals and ambitions as mission. However, I ended up injuring myself several months ago, and in that time I came to face the problems I had literally been running away from. Here I did the Alcoholics Anonymous Step 4 moral inventory and came to realize just how much I am motivated by fear. And with my fears uncovered, the signs of betrayal from my wife became more and more apparent, until I played inspector faggot to confirm. This confirmation of infidelity is where I start now.
Stats:
Age: 36
Wife: 34
Married: 6 years, together for 10
Kids: 5-year-old boy, 1-year-old girl
Height: 5’10.5”
Weight: 181 lbs (−1)
Body fat: 23% (Navy Method)
Lifts (1-rep maxes):
Squat: 250 lbs (tested 5/8), goal: 302 lbs
Deadlift: 300 lbs (tested 5/13), goal: 342 lbs
Bench press: 205 lbs (tested 5/9), goal: 229 lbs
Overhead press: 95 × 8 (estimated 1RM: 120 lbs), goal: 150 lbs
Readings:
Finished: No More Mr. Nice Guy, When I Say No I Feel Guilty, Married Alpha Primer
Finished (Audio): The Book of Pook, The Way of the Superior Man
Current: Mindful Masculinity Self Leadership Program
Mental:
I am back from a Rule 9 ban. I was initially puzzled and butthurt because I was sure I hadn’t broken Rule 9. I was positive that my Own Your Shit was written from my perspective. Sure, there were some “she” statements, but they were necessary to tell the story and describe her behavior. So, I asked a few questions, read some sidebar posts and old Own Your Shit threads, and after a few days it started to click for me.
It was my perspective, only it was the perspective from the passenger seat of the car my wife was driving. I wasn’t in control of the situation. After coming to this realization, it felt like my whole life has been a Rule 9 violation, not just my last post.
Marriage:
Mostly successful shut-the-fuck-ups. I received comments on my last Own Your Shit that I should be initiating in order to try and become outcome independent. I initiated two evenings in a row. First one was late/lazy and got shot down. Second had better timing and setup, still a no. She threw a deflection about only getting attention when I want something from her.
It shows my frame and value aren’t yet where they need to be and still need work. I didn’t react, just logged it and moved on. Although, being honest with myself, I have to admit my ego got a little bit wounded here. I thought I was farther along, but I still have lots of work to do. In hindsight, this would have been a good opportunity to apply amused mastery. At least I shut the fuck up and didn’t defend, explain, excuse, or rationalize.
Having sat on it for a couple of days now, I notice it has awakened some old feelings, anger, mostly, and some frustration. I wondered why I never really hit the anger phase when working my way through the sidebar. But here it is. I welcome it and will use it as motivation to work harder.
I’m calibrating next moves, likely focusing on persistent outcome independence and preselection behaviors. I need to not do something to get a result, but because it’s something I do. Kino and playfulness will have to become part of my natural vibe, not bait, and without slipping into a dancing monkey program. This means I can have no expectations.
Embracing the suck...
Career:
Slowly making progress on spending more time on projects and less slacking off.
Analysis
I didn’t filter or select for these.
