As a trad gal myself, (and a successful one) this is my specialty! Although this piece is very interesting, the practical advice is go where they breed trad girls. You should be specifically looking between ages 24-30. They are typically bred in the rural corners of the world, particularly in the US. The thing about trad girls, not only are they looking for a long time commitment, they are also highly trained (and bred) to sniff out potential mates.
Here's how you sniff out the marrying type:
1. Her parents are still married or had a good marriage. 2. She likes her parents. 3. She gets along well with the rest of her family - unless she's Italian then family drama goes with the territory. 4. Her friend has a baby, and she likes it. Bonus points if she's jealous of the friend. 4. She works in or is studying the nurturing arts e.g. teacher, nurse, occupational therapist, etc.
My one caveat is, you may want to stay away from virgins. They go rogue mid-life.
This advice boils down to "wait until women grow out of their youthful years in which they want alpha sex and shift into the phase in which they look for a beta provider". But this is not very good advice, insofar as the man's perspective is concerned. Curtis, I suspect that you are very familiar with the pua/manosphere literature and there are some real gems there, which you should be recommending instead of giving somewhat misleading relationship advice. For instance, I believe "The Rational Male" by Rollo Tomassi should be a required reading for every man.
As for the topic at hand - getting into a long-term relationship with a woman of the SAME (or similar) age when you are 30 is an absolute trap. For one, there is a massive sexual market value mismatch - she is exiting her prime years, and you are entering yours. She is getting a great deal, especially if you are a well-educated, fiscally independent man with good professional prospects. You on the other hand are getting a very bad deal - she has already nearly lost what men value most in women (youthful beauty) and she probably has a very high notch count after "partying" throughout her 20's, most definitely higher than yours. This is math (or did you nerds call it probability?).
The advice to your late 20's reader should be - for the love of God, do not even consider marriage before you are on the other end of 35 and do not even consider any form of long-term relationship experiments until you are on the other end of 30. At your age chances are you will not get a good deal out of any LTR, so just as "play the field" as it were. Date women, have sex, have fun, most importantly - acquire experience. But do not overthink it and don't make it into an obsession. Far too many men in their late 20's fall into the trap of panicking that they should be marrying ASAP, only to end up divorced and broke some 10 years later. In the modern day and age, with how society functions (not to mention divorce laws!), you shouldn't be hurrying at all.
And even then, when you are in your late 30's - should you be going for the women in their early 30's? Ugh, I don't think so, man. And before someone says I am referencing cringe pua literature - Aristotle said the ideal marriage for a man is 38 and 18 for a woman. And Aristotle, like, invented logic and shit.
For a myriad of reasons you should always be trying to go as young as possible in your mate choice. The "mature" 30-something woman is a lie >90% of the time. The reason why she seems more mature, is because she has realized that the biological clock for her ovaries is ticking and thus she has shifted her priorities from excitement to security. That doesn't make her your friend, on the contrary, this makes her a more dangerous partner than the 20-something girl looking for excitement, who is usually much easier to see through.
For one, the older a woman is, the more sexual partners she is likely to have had. Remember, sex is a very special thing for a woman. The more partners a woman has had, the more unreliable she is to hold a stable long-term relationship. We all know that, which is why every society on earth has had a slut-shaming social stigma. When you are in a relationship with a woman, you are implicitly competing with every single man that has been with her before you. Every woman is constantly comparing. The more partners - the tougher the competition. And what do we say in Sillicon Valley? That's right - "competition is for losers".
This doesn't mean that Aristotle's formula is always realistic nowadays. In fact, the vast majority of the time it obviously isn't. But these are things every man should always keep in mind.
First off, if your name is really Hiroshi then consider going to Japan and finding a good women. Not just basing this on stereotypes, I spent a decent portion of my life in Japan, and even in the big cities women hold more traditional values. I remember this one girl, on the second date, brought up the topic of her duty to the emperor, and I was kinda like "ooookkaayy", while backing away slowly. But yeah, if you want someone who by default will expect to stay home and raise the kids, look towards your ancestral homeland.
The other huge point trad guys always overlook is their own role in the relationship. Trad guys often sound like 12 year old girls dreaming of prince charming: "if only I could find a woman who will whisk me away from this degenerate modern life". No --- if you want to succeed you need the inverse mindset. The vast majority of women will gravitate towards where they see status (and rightfully so). In the absence of a good man, that is Sex and the City, day care, the government, and so on. You need to change her frame by being that good man. You need to prove to her by example that there is a superior path that offers her and her future children safety, comfort, happiness, status, and a space to flourish. If you put in the work to whisk her away to a better place, she will follow, no matter how much she claims to be invested in that corner office making .ppts.
For example, if you're not making enough to provide her the basic lifestyle she expects, you're going to have trouble convincing her to quit her job and downgrade. Being able to provide is the primary role of the trad man, so don't step up if you don't meet the basic requirements yourself. If you yourself are struggling with porn, alcohol, or other addictions, get those under control --- if you are a mess, you cannot lead.
The good news is that, as Curtis points out, commitment to thottery is shallow. It is dissonant to human nature. Provided a superior path, most women will take it. Your job is not to argue but to lead. Women will resist verbally (because they've been taught it's dignified to do so) --- make your case calmly, but never argue, and, this is key, _never_ attempt to force her to adopt your values. That is nerd behavior, and one thing women are great at it, is sniffing out and avoiding nerds. You want to show her status, not a prison. Over time she will follow in her actions, and once her actions prove your case, she will follow in her values. The big caveat here is that you need to be making a real and persuasive case for her adoption of the trad lifestyle --- if your case does not line up with reality, she will reject it. You can't cut corners. She will follow strength and status, not hypocrisy and empty rhetoric.
Don't discount women who are just doing what's normal in Babylon --- these women will do what's normal in Jerusalem, too. Simply providing strong masculine leadership goes a lot farther than you'd think. Women are designed to be feminine in the presence of a strong man (and vice versa). A lot of this works itself it out.
Hiroshi, A very useful filter is a partner with one or more serious hobbies. Something that they have invested real effort in over a long period of time. You can tell if it is a real hobby if they are very good at it. It should be unique to them but the high skill is the real tell. I tend to think basic stuff may not count, but if you meet someone that is "VERY" good at one of those basic common hobbies it still works.
The good thing about dating a person who is or has mastered a skill and still practices it, is that you know for sure that they like you. If they didn't like you, they would go to their hobbies instead. Likewise get a hobby yourself and get good at it if you don't have one!
I was _this close_ to writing in almost the exact same question, but avoided doing so, as I'm trying really hard not to post my Ls online anymore.
This post hits entirely too close to home, and describes my last relationship, its eventual failure, and my ex's post-relationship trajectory, perfectly. Just when I thought I couldn't get blackpilled any more on modern dating, this one almost choked me going down.
I wouldn't be surprised if said ex subscribes to Gray Mirror. J, I hope you see this post, I hope you read this comment, and I hope you feel bad about it.
In other news, your friend Mary seems much, much wiser about relationships than most of the other people I've listened to on the subject. If she has a blog / substack / whatever, anything where I could read more of her insights, would you be willing to point me in the correct direction? Thanks in advance
> This also comes with the mature recognition that NO ONE is the ideal person.
A male coworker once told me he was afraid to commit to his girlfriend because he thought of relationships the same way he thought about cars: maybe there's a better one out there? How do I know this one is the perfect one for me?
I wasn't always happy in my relationship (the lowest point was actually when my then-future husband decided to change careers and take an entry-level job making 1/3 of what I was making at the time; very much to Vera Farmiga’s character's point; fortunately, he came to his senses after a few months). But, I can't get into the mindset of my old coworker. And I think it's just because I am a natural-born conservative: pessimistic, suspicious and cautious.
As corny as it might sound, my view of relationships is in complete agreement with what the fox says in The Little Prince: the people and things that are special to you are those that you invest in. "Ownership" automatically implies higher value.
I once saw the Dalai Lama speak, yeah thats right, the 14th one. It was in SF - there was a Q&A and a woman got up to the mic and asked HH the DL about raising kids and his reply was literally -"Why are you asking a Buddhist Monk about raising kids?' Massive laugh from the audience - I kinda feel the same about asking Curtis about dating at this point in time but it seems like the community here has stepped up and posted some good advice.
"The thing that really bugs me is that modern messaging implies that you shouldn’t even consider making a decision of that heftiness until you’ve spent a couple of years with someone, and by that time it’s an almost impossible decision to make unless you’ve already accidentally made it, long ago.
"It’s remarkable how much better things work if you move very quickly to that mutual fiction. This also comes with the mature recognition that NO ONE is the ideal person."
In a week, I'm going to meet for the first time the woman I think I might want to marry.
I can look at a woman and instantly have a feeling of whether she's someone I might consider wanting to raise a family with. It's completely binary: MAYBE, or not a chance, ever. And usually it's the second one, even if she's pretty attractive and has all sorts of great qualities. I don't know; I just feel it or don't. And from experience, I'm convinced that if I don't, I never will.
I went down the PUA route, since due to being a sperg, despite being smart and good-looking, relationships didn't seem to "just happen" for me like they did for most people, and when I tried to make them happen, the results were often disastrous.
So I hooked up with a bunch of women in bars, which boosted my sexual confidence and general social skills. And the theory was: you get good at meeting and connecting with women, so you have more options, and then you'll be able to commit to the sort of person you actually want a commitment with, instead of just settling for whatever you can get.
But after hooking up with dozens of women in bars, I'm pretty sure I could double the number are not be any closer to finding someone I want to settle down with.
So there's this girl... I won't go into the details right now, but the point is: Every time I saw a picture of her, I felt like: OMG, I want to be inside her without a condom. I want to put a baby in her, and raise that baby...
I haven't explicitly told her anything like that yet, but my intentions with her have I think always been extremely obvious, and she seems totally down with it. It took me a long time to accept that she was, but it kind of blows my mind that this is actually possible. You mean you can just fall in love with someone, and instead of being creeped out, they can just be like, "Ok, yes please!"
And I'm realizing that there is a lot of power in knowing what you want and being clear in your intentions.
I'm going into it with the attitude: I think she might be the right woman for me, but I have to be careful and make sure... But if she is, I'm ready. Fuck it, let's do this.
Again, we'll see how it turns out, but so far so good... Maybe it's my Aspergery black-and-white thinking, but... There are two reasons to try to sleep with/initiate a sexual relationship with a woman: Just for fun (ie pump-and-dump to use a crude expression), or for marriage/babies. Yeah, I intend to live together for a while first...
But this idea that you just stumble your way into a great relationship, that the "healthy", "mature" thing is to have a bunch of serial semi-committed relationships where it's not just a hookup or a fling, but don't dare even think about what relationships naturally lead to and/or are for until you've already been cohabitating for 2 years... I'm not sure what's supposedly so mature about it. Does it work? Is it working for the most part?
Seems like what usually happens is people glob on to someone because they were there at the right place and the right time, and then they stay together out of inertia, and then eventually they either break up or get married because they're too afraid of the alternative.
I'm not saying I have the answers, but this strikes me as far from an optimal strategy.
Current partner and I, the first time we slept together, told each other we weren’t dating just for kicks and were dating people towards the intention of marriage, so this had better be serious or nothing at all. We started spending a lot of time together, but I felt like it was healthy and functional. One night a few months later we fought over something and he told me his best friend had told him that we seemed codependent (she has called 2 other happy long-term couples that we are friends with this). He took her seriously and that conversation basically ended the honeymoon phase of our relationship. Four months later and I still don’t feel like I can trust him as much. It really hurt, I am still trying to be all in, and I don’t know if he is. He’s still talking like he wants to spend his life with me, and I think we’re in many ways a good fit, but I’m realizing increasingly that I’m scared. He’s slept with a lot of our female friends and insists on me making some life changes that would be really hard.
The question now is whether I send him this blog post or whether that would be too crazy and emotional and fight-picking and reassurance-seeking and oh my god I’m probably insane haha
Can I leave a totally off topic comment? Is that allowed?
What do you all think about evacuating Taiwan? Like assuming "we" don't want the Red Chinese to get all that bleeding edge chip-making talent and hardware, is there another solution but for relocating the non-Communist Chinese Nation, intact, to some other place? I'm not actually sure *where* to put them, possibly Papua New Guinea, but basically get the people out, and turn Taiwan into a giant military base. This is a way of owning the ChiComs, I believe. Think of how pissed they would be.
I just spent $10 to finally subscribe to GM so I could leave this comment...
I figured that was $10 I would have otherwise spent on Hinge's "digital roses $3.33 each" or Bumble's "SuperSwipe from $1.53 each", or some other dating app's purported way to "stand out" from the pack of normies, bunched together like famished dogs in a chainlink-fenced, overgrown backyard, as their neglectful owner comes out on the porch once a day to heave some cheap kibble on the ground.
Pareto was right. Some 20% of women get 80% of the attention. But when it comes to a dating app, where attraction is not subjected to the limitations of face-to-face contact, it's probably more like 1% of the women getting 99% of the swipes. After all, it takes zero courage to "SuperSwipe" a dime, versus approaching her at Kroger and asking her if she knows where the triscuits are, and then saying jk, I just wanted to talk to you (while flattered, she informed me she was married and couldn't oblige).
So I buy a value pack of Hinge "digital roses" for $30, convincing myself that yeah, the last 50 mega-babes I sent one to didn't respond, but maybe this time, this one will actually look at my profile, and see that I may not be a strapping gigachad, but I've scored some 8s, 9s, 10s in the past; I'm in shape, a decent trad guy, pretty handsome (mom says), have most of my shit together, and just want to share life with someone else, have some good meaningful sex, and make some babies in the process.
But just like all the previous cyber-roses, mine just gets lost like a piece of confetti that showers these women all day every day. And even if I did get a response, what would come of it? A few months, maybe a year of fun, maybe some decent intimacy, but ultimately an amicable split at best, or boredom, infidelity, and an ugly break up at worst.
And as I hit my 38th birthday tomorrow, I lay in bed at 3am after being jolted awake—as I do nearly every night—by a strange mixture of guilt, anxiety, regret, and fear, wondering where the hell I went wrong, and if there's still time to have a normal relationship, and if so, praying that my parents live into their 80s so my kids will at least know their grandparents for a few short years.
I don't know why I'm still typing, but whatever. I'm not looking for pity here. My circling session is later today. I just know that stats show my experience isn't unique. There's something really screwed up with the romantic perceptions and expectations of our generation. I'm not sure what it is or how it gets fixed. I'm not a victim, but definitely a product of it. I've made a lot of mistakes. I dumped a good amount of girls I could have stayed with. And a good amount have dumped me that should have stayed with me. But whatever.
All that to say, let me try this: if there's a trad girl still reading this, and you live in the Nashville area let's hang out.
I might be missing the grifty joke here, but all of these relationship problems are downstream of the whole living in a totally misruled society thing.
As a trad gal myself, (and a successful one) this is my specialty! Although this piece is very interesting, the practical advice is go where they breed trad girls. You should be specifically looking between ages 24-30. They are typically bred in the rural corners of the world, particularly in the US. The thing about trad girls, not only are they looking for a long time commitment, they are also highly trained (and bred) to sniff out potential mates.
Here's how you sniff out the marrying type:
1. Her parents are still married or had a good marriage. 2. She likes her parents. 3. She gets along well with the rest of her family - unless she's Italian then family drama goes with the territory. 4. Her friend has a baby, and she likes it. Bonus points if she's jealous of the friend. 4. She works in or is studying the nurturing arts e.g. teacher, nurse, occupational therapist, etc.
My one caveat is, you may want to stay away from virgins. They go rogue mid-life.
This advice boils down to "wait until women grow out of their youthful years in which they want alpha sex and shift into the phase in which they look for a beta provider". But this is not very good advice, insofar as the man's perspective is concerned. Curtis, I suspect that you are very familiar with the pua/manosphere literature and there are some real gems there, which you should be recommending instead of giving somewhat misleading relationship advice. For instance, I believe "The Rational Male" by Rollo Tomassi should be a required reading for every man.
As for the topic at hand - getting into a long-term relationship with a woman of the SAME (or similar) age when you are 30 is an absolute trap. For one, there is a massive sexual market value mismatch - she is exiting her prime years, and you are entering yours. She is getting a great deal, especially if you are a well-educated, fiscally independent man with good professional prospects. You on the other hand are getting a very bad deal - she has already nearly lost what men value most in women (youthful beauty) and she probably has a very high notch count after "partying" throughout her 20's, most definitely higher than yours. This is math (or did you nerds call it probability?).
The advice to your late 20's reader should be - for the love of God, do not even consider marriage before you are on the other end of 35 and do not even consider any form of long-term relationship experiments until you are on the other end of 30. At your age chances are you will not get a good deal out of any LTR, so just as "play the field" as it were. Date women, have sex, have fun, most importantly - acquire experience. But do not overthink it and don't make it into an obsession. Far too many men in their late 20's fall into the trap of panicking that they should be marrying ASAP, only to end up divorced and broke some 10 years later. In the modern day and age, with how society functions (not to mention divorce laws!), you shouldn't be hurrying at all.
And even then, when you are in your late 30's - should you be going for the women in their early 30's? Ugh, I don't think so, man. And before someone says I am referencing cringe pua literature - Aristotle said the ideal marriage for a man is 38 and 18 for a woman. And Aristotle, like, invented logic and shit.
For a myriad of reasons you should always be trying to go as young as possible in your mate choice. The "mature" 30-something woman is a lie >90% of the time. The reason why she seems more mature, is because she has realized that the biological clock for her ovaries is ticking and thus she has shifted her priorities from excitement to security. That doesn't make her your friend, on the contrary, this makes her a more dangerous partner than the 20-something girl looking for excitement, who is usually much easier to see through.
For one, the older a woman is, the more sexual partners she is likely to have had. Remember, sex is a very special thing for a woman. The more partners a woman has had, the more unreliable she is to hold a stable long-term relationship. We all know that, which is why every society on earth has had a slut-shaming social stigma. When you are in a relationship with a woman, you are implicitly competing with every single man that has been with her before you. Every woman is constantly comparing. The more partners - the tougher the competition. And what do we say in Sillicon Valley? That's right - "competition is for losers".
This doesn't mean that Aristotle's formula is always realistic nowadays. In fact, the vast majority of the time it obviously isn't. But these are things every man should always keep in mind.
First off, if your name is really Hiroshi then consider going to Japan and finding a good women. Not just basing this on stereotypes, I spent a decent portion of my life in Japan, and even in the big cities women hold more traditional values. I remember this one girl, on the second date, brought up the topic of her duty to the emperor, and I was kinda like "ooookkaayy", while backing away slowly. But yeah, if you want someone who by default will expect to stay home and raise the kids, look towards your ancestral homeland.
The other huge point trad guys always overlook is their own role in the relationship. Trad guys often sound like 12 year old girls dreaming of prince charming: "if only I could find a woman who will whisk me away from this degenerate modern life". No --- if you want to succeed you need the inverse mindset. The vast majority of women will gravitate towards where they see status (and rightfully so). In the absence of a good man, that is Sex and the City, day care, the government, and so on. You need to change her frame by being that good man. You need to prove to her by example that there is a superior path that offers her and her future children safety, comfort, happiness, status, and a space to flourish. If you put in the work to whisk her away to a better place, she will follow, no matter how much she claims to be invested in that corner office making .ppts.
For example, if you're not making enough to provide her the basic lifestyle she expects, you're going to have trouble convincing her to quit her job and downgrade. Being able to provide is the primary role of the trad man, so don't step up if you don't meet the basic requirements yourself. If you yourself are struggling with porn, alcohol, or other addictions, get those under control --- if you are a mess, you cannot lead.
The good news is that, as Curtis points out, commitment to thottery is shallow. It is dissonant to human nature. Provided a superior path, most women will take it. Your job is not to argue but to lead. Women will resist verbally (because they've been taught it's dignified to do so) --- make your case calmly, but never argue, and, this is key, _never_ attempt to force her to adopt your values. That is nerd behavior, and one thing women are great at it, is sniffing out and avoiding nerds. You want to show her status, not a prison. Over time she will follow in her actions, and once her actions prove your case, she will follow in her values. The big caveat here is that you need to be making a real and persuasive case for her adoption of the trad lifestyle --- if your case does not line up with reality, she will reject it. You can't cut corners. She will follow strength and status, not hypocrisy and empty rhetoric.
Don't discount women who are just doing what's normal in Babylon --- these women will do what's normal in Jerusalem, too. Simply providing strong masculine leadership goes a lot farther than you'd think. Women are designed to be feminine in the presence of a strong man (and vice versa). A lot of this works itself it out.
Hiroshi, A very useful filter is a partner with one or more serious hobbies. Something that they have invested real effort in over a long period of time. You can tell if it is a real hobby if they are very good at it. It should be unique to them but the high skill is the real tell. I tend to think basic stuff may not count, but if you meet someone that is "VERY" good at one of those basic common hobbies it still works.
The good thing about dating a person who is or has mastered a skill and still practices it, is that you know for sure that they like you. If they didn't like you, they would go to their hobbies instead. Likewise get a hobby yourself and get good at it if you don't have one!
The movie clip is outstanding. Makes me almost think that Hollywood entertainment products are not entirely garbage.
Off topic: Dominic Cummings just mentioned you, and is clearly channeling a lot of your political thinking, in his most recent post: https://dominiccummings.substack.com/p/regime-change-2-a-plea-to-silicon/comments
How much of what you are describing here is due to the pill? Would the situation be substantially different had it not been invented?
I was _this close_ to writing in almost the exact same question, but avoided doing so, as I'm trying really hard not to post my Ls online anymore.
This post hits entirely too close to home, and describes my last relationship, its eventual failure, and my ex's post-relationship trajectory, perfectly. Just when I thought I couldn't get blackpilled any more on modern dating, this one almost choked me going down.
I wouldn't be surprised if said ex subscribes to Gray Mirror. J, I hope you see this post, I hope you read this comment, and I hope you feel bad about it.
In other news, your friend Mary seems much, much wiser about relationships than most of the other people I've listened to on the subject. If she has a blog / substack / whatever, anything where I could read more of her insights, would you be willing to point me in the correct direction? Thanks in advance
> This also comes with the mature recognition that NO ONE is the ideal person.
A male coworker once told me he was afraid to commit to his girlfriend because he thought of relationships the same way he thought about cars: maybe there's a better one out there? How do I know this one is the perfect one for me?
I wasn't always happy in my relationship (the lowest point was actually when my then-future husband decided to change careers and take an entry-level job making 1/3 of what I was making at the time; very much to Vera Farmiga’s character's point; fortunately, he came to his senses after a few months). But, I can't get into the mindset of my old coworker. And I think it's just because I am a natural-born conservative: pessimistic, suspicious and cautious.
As corny as it might sound, my view of relationships is in complete agreement with what the fox says in The Little Prince: the people and things that are special to you are those that you invest in. "Ownership" automatically implies higher value.
I once saw the Dalai Lama speak, yeah thats right, the 14th one. It was in SF - there was a Q&A and a woman got up to the mic and asked HH the DL about raising kids and his reply was literally -"Why are you asking a Buddhist Monk about raising kids?' Massive laugh from the audience - I kinda feel the same about asking Curtis about dating at this point in time but it seems like the community here has stepped up and posted some good advice.
You should let Mary guest-post more often.
Really like these quotes:
"The thing that really bugs me is that modern messaging implies that you shouldn’t even consider making a decision of that heftiness until you’ve spent a couple of years with someone, and by that time it’s an almost impossible decision to make unless you’ve already accidentally made it, long ago.
"It’s remarkable how much better things work if you move very quickly to that mutual fiction. This also comes with the mature recognition that NO ONE is the ideal person."
In a week, I'm going to meet for the first time the woman I think I might want to marry.
I can look at a woman and instantly have a feeling of whether she's someone I might consider wanting to raise a family with. It's completely binary: MAYBE, or not a chance, ever. And usually it's the second one, even if she's pretty attractive and has all sorts of great qualities. I don't know; I just feel it or don't. And from experience, I'm convinced that if I don't, I never will.
I went down the PUA route, since due to being a sperg, despite being smart and good-looking, relationships didn't seem to "just happen" for me like they did for most people, and when I tried to make them happen, the results were often disastrous.
So I hooked up with a bunch of women in bars, which boosted my sexual confidence and general social skills. And the theory was: you get good at meeting and connecting with women, so you have more options, and then you'll be able to commit to the sort of person you actually want a commitment with, instead of just settling for whatever you can get.
But after hooking up with dozens of women in bars, I'm pretty sure I could double the number are not be any closer to finding someone I want to settle down with.
So there's this girl... I won't go into the details right now, but the point is: Every time I saw a picture of her, I felt like: OMG, I want to be inside her without a condom. I want to put a baby in her, and raise that baby...
I haven't explicitly told her anything like that yet, but my intentions with her have I think always been extremely obvious, and she seems totally down with it. It took me a long time to accept that she was, but it kind of blows my mind that this is actually possible. You mean you can just fall in love with someone, and instead of being creeped out, they can just be like, "Ok, yes please!"
And I'm realizing that there is a lot of power in knowing what you want and being clear in your intentions.
I'm going into it with the attitude: I think she might be the right woman for me, but I have to be careful and make sure... But if she is, I'm ready. Fuck it, let's do this.
Again, we'll see how it turns out, but so far so good... Maybe it's my Aspergery black-and-white thinking, but... There are two reasons to try to sleep with/initiate a sexual relationship with a woman: Just for fun (ie pump-and-dump to use a crude expression), or for marriage/babies. Yeah, I intend to live together for a while first...
But this idea that you just stumble your way into a great relationship, that the "healthy", "mature" thing is to have a bunch of serial semi-committed relationships where it's not just a hookup or a fling, but don't dare even think about what relationships naturally lead to and/or are for until you've already been cohabitating for 2 years... I'm not sure what's supposedly so mature about it. Does it work? Is it working for the most part?
Seems like what usually happens is people glob on to someone because they were there at the right place and the right time, and then they stay together out of inertia, and then eventually they either break up or get married because they're too afraid of the alternative.
I'm not saying I have the answers, but this strikes me as far from an optimal strategy.
Current partner and I, the first time we slept together, told each other we weren’t dating just for kicks and were dating people towards the intention of marriage, so this had better be serious or nothing at all. We started spending a lot of time together, but I felt like it was healthy and functional. One night a few months later we fought over something and he told me his best friend had told him that we seemed codependent (she has called 2 other happy long-term couples that we are friends with this). He took her seriously and that conversation basically ended the honeymoon phase of our relationship. Four months later and I still don’t feel like I can trust him as much. It really hurt, I am still trying to be all in, and I don’t know if he is. He’s still talking like he wants to spend his life with me, and I think we’re in many ways a good fit, but I’m realizing increasingly that I’m scared. He’s slept with a lot of our female friends and insists on me making some life changes that would be really hard.
The question now is whether I send him this blog post or whether that would be too crazy and emotional and fight-picking and reassurance-seeking and oh my god I’m probably insane haha
Can I leave a totally off topic comment? Is that allowed?
What do you all think about evacuating Taiwan? Like assuming "we" don't want the Red Chinese to get all that bleeding edge chip-making talent and hardware, is there another solution but for relocating the non-Communist Chinese Nation, intact, to some other place? I'm not actually sure *where* to put them, possibly Papua New Guinea, but basically get the people out, and turn Taiwan into a giant military base. This is a way of owning the ChiComs, I believe. Think of how pissed they would be.
I just spent $10 to finally subscribe to GM so I could leave this comment...
I figured that was $10 I would have otherwise spent on Hinge's "digital roses $3.33 each" or Bumble's "SuperSwipe from $1.53 each", or some other dating app's purported way to "stand out" from the pack of normies, bunched together like famished dogs in a chainlink-fenced, overgrown backyard, as their neglectful owner comes out on the porch once a day to heave some cheap kibble on the ground.
Pareto was right. Some 20% of women get 80% of the attention. But when it comes to a dating app, where attraction is not subjected to the limitations of face-to-face contact, it's probably more like 1% of the women getting 99% of the swipes. After all, it takes zero courage to "SuperSwipe" a dime, versus approaching her at Kroger and asking her if she knows where the triscuits are, and then saying jk, I just wanted to talk to you (while flattered, she informed me she was married and couldn't oblige).
So I buy a value pack of Hinge "digital roses" for $30, convincing myself that yeah, the last 50 mega-babes I sent one to didn't respond, but maybe this time, this one will actually look at my profile, and see that I may not be a strapping gigachad, but I've scored some 8s, 9s, 10s in the past; I'm in shape, a decent trad guy, pretty handsome (mom says), have most of my shit together, and just want to share life with someone else, have some good meaningful sex, and make some babies in the process.
But just like all the previous cyber-roses, mine just gets lost like a piece of confetti that showers these women all day every day. And even if I did get a response, what would come of it? A few months, maybe a year of fun, maybe some decent intimacy, but ultimately an amicable split at best, or boredom, infidelity, and an ugly break up at worst.
And as I hit my 38th birthday tomorrow, I lay in bed at 3am after being jolted awake—as I do nearly every night—by a strange mixture of guilt, anxiety, regret, and fear, wondering where the hell I went wrong, and if there's still time to have a normal relationship, and if so, praying that my parents live into their 80s so my kids will at least know their grandparents for a few short years.
I don't know why I'm still typing, but whatever. I'm not looking for pity here. My circling session is later today. I just know that stats show my experience isn't unique. There's something really screwed up with the romantic perceptions and expectations of our generation. I'm not sure what it is or how it gets fixed. I'm not a victim, but definitely a product of it. I've made a lot of mistakes. I dumped a good amount of girls I could have stayed with. And a good amount have dumped me that should have stayed with me. But whatever.
All that to say, let me try this: if there's a trad girl still reading this, and you live in the Nashville area let's hang out.
I might be missing the grifty joke here, but all of these relationship problems are downstream of the whole living in a totally misruled society thing.