Hmm, what should I write about today?
Well here’s a nice topic…
The good folks at CNN are reporting on why women cheat, and the reasons have changed.
Men cheat, women cheat, this is known. But there’s been a 40% increase in the # of women reporting that they are cheating.
Of course the article doesn’t give us any baseline to understand what the # means, is this a move from 10 out of a 100 to 14 out of a 100 – or 40 out of a 100 moving to 56 out of a 100. (Math people do check my calculations in the comments)
Is the author of said article a woman? Just so happens she is. In the popular press, articles about relationships, dating, family and children are largely written by women. I don’t want to get conspiratorial, but I’d say that on average – women have a different take on relationships than men. We’ve discussed this before – but women primarily deal with “go getters” when it comes to sex and relationships. They think that’s the sum total of all men, and basically dismiss all the men who’ve been socialized into *not* taking action. Those men are invisible. Our experience is obviously different.
Here at WIA Industries – We believe that women cheat for the exact same reasons and with the same or greater frequency than the average man. The difference is that women get offered opportunities to have sex (thus possibly cheat) a lot more than men. And given the dynamics of how sex works – a woman can have more sex, more quality sex, and more diverse sex because of this.
Feeling inadequate yet?
Part of becoming a player is respecting a woman for her proclivities and her appetites. Why did the Tiger maul his trainer? The tiger is a tiger. Tiger didn’t go crazy, it went Tiger.
In contrast – here’s what Mass Media is telling us
1. The Author Makes It About Herself, sorta
These questions first occurred to me a few years ago when I began to wonder how many of my friends were actually faithful to their husbands.
I was just chatting with Moma about the tendency of game gurus to go political after a while – I’m not trying to do that. This is just media analysis.
2. Flexibile “morality”
….another friend told me she was 100 percent faithful to her husband, except when she was out of town for work each month. Not long after, another told me that while she’d never had sex with another man, she’d had so many emotional affairs and inappropriate email correspondences over the years that she’d had to buy a separate hard drive to store them all.
What happens in Vegas… Where have I heard that before?
Emotional affairs – Hmm, Work Husband by chance
Inappropriate Email – So a master of the text game. (Shout to IRL, but we were discussing the meaning of “language” in the Mr. Smoov context)
3. Nonchalant
but that many of them were so nonchalant in the way they described their extramarital adventures
My take on a woman’s non-chalance about sex outside of marriage, parallels my thoughts on women’s thoughts about sex in general.
IT’S JUST NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL…until it becomes useful to them in some other context.
We guys have a tendency to overvalue things, work with fixed definitions, and stay in rigid constructs. We want life to be static, women to be unchanging – when the facts on the ground tell us that all is in flux.
So the idea of sex, something we heavily value because it’s harder for us to get as much and as good as we want – that they can be nonchalant about having it, about breaking marital vows – it’s certain to enrage a man.
4. Needs not being Met and Blaming the Victim
Often, they loved their husbands, but felt in some fundamental way that their needs (sexual, emotional, psychological) were not being met inside the marriage. Some even wondered if their husbands knew about their infidelity, choosing to look away.
So one of the issues with any LTR monogamous relationship is that humans want variety and novelty. That’s normal. And a lot of guys have argued that they find monogamy to be abnormal. Plenty of guys are in favor of polygynous arrangements.
Of course many of these guys saying such thing have really thought about how women would respond. Chances are the average dude would not be able to collect his 4 wives – because the incentives to be a rich and powerful man’s 32nd wife is too great.
If you’ve been doing this a while, the long “suffering” house wife is not just a trope in porn. Women often lead lives of quiet desperation – and often times being a 3rd party recognizing some value or worth is enough to get her juices flowing.
We also have to recognize that familiarity breeds contempt. So even if the guy is “the perfect alpha”, “ultimate player” – merely being *different* from that guy is enough to get the fires burning.
The idea that the guy is looking the other way on being made a fool of – although it may be true in some cases – it’s probably just mental justification.
5. Self Awareness?
“The fact is,” one of these friends told me, “I’m nicer to my husband when I have something special going on that’s just for me.” She found that she was kinder, more patient, less resentful, “less of a bitch.”
Those last 4 words. Hmm.
6. Marriage is Oppression!
Women were describing infidelity not as a transgression but a creative or even subversive act, a protest against an institution they’d come to experience as suffocating or oppressive.
Rollo and Roosh would have a field day with this. But here’s some good game. Shout to Reggie on the Barnum statements – but if you’re running long game (or long distance game) on a chick with a boyfriend/husband – this is the conclusion you want her to come to ON HER OWN.
Inception?
So in terms of game tech – we adapt this little factoid about some women thinking that marriage/relationships are oppression and that she needs to break free (with you, at the ice cream parlor of your choice)
Because you can’t really tell her that her relationship is a prison, but you can say that yours was…you can lead her through example. In discussing it with you, trying to bridge gaps, she’ll generate experiences from her own life. To prompt this typical behavior, “Have you ever felt like that, like you were trapped, like you were expected to do…”
You can also use a breadcrumb strategy. You leave “clues” and let her uncover these things for herself.
7. Stigma
They were also unwilling to bear the stigma of a publicly open marriage or to go through the effort of negotiating such a complex arrangement.
Aka, discretion is key in these relationships – but the game takeaway is that she DEEPLY cares about how she appears publicly.
A lot of you guys going for those makeout sessions on the dance floor in front of everybody – two things happen
- Release in Tension
- Social Consequence
We’ve talked about that kissing a chick before you get to a place where things can go down is a bad move. But a lot of chicks a) don’t like PDA in general, b) don’t like kissing your ugly mug in front of their peers.
Discretion, Discretion, Discretion.
8. Invisible Labor
They found married life incredibly dull and constraining and resented the fact that as women, they felt they consistently did a disproportionate amount of the invisible labor that went into maintaining their lifestyle
What’s interesting here from the male perspective is that there is plenty of invisible labor on our side to keep the chick “on tilt”. And what’s worse, you can’t keep doing the same tricks over and over. At some point, the flowers no longer help. The back rubs do nothing. The chocolate only makes her fat.
But since this isn’t written from a guy trying to keep things going….
9. So His Fault Right?
“The inequality of it all is such an annoying factor that I am usually in a bad mood when my spouse is in my presence,”
That’s the male sort of take. The player recognizes that a lot of the tangible things in a relationship – they are about mood, feeling, and emotion.
So your chick comes home in a mood. The typical guy thing is to placate, ask what’s wrong, or ignore. The player move is to engage and perform some emotional jujitsu. The same way that you engaged her when you met – the roller coaster of emotions that eventually lands in “amorous” mode – is the same thing you need to do here.
If she stays in a bad mood around YOU, guess what happens when she’s not in a bad mood and you come around?
This is that invisible labor of keeping a relationship together – because it’s now your task to keep the chick on track.
This is the inherent conflict of Alpha and Player and the LTR. The Alpha does not care in the least. So she’ll get frustrated, send signs, and eventually leave. The player is trying to engineer something all the time. He doesn’t go “Baby what’s wrong”, but she keeps calling for him to give her that back and forth to get her out of her emotional rut.
We often talk about how women use things outside of themselves to feel better. Retail therapy, eating….She’s an entirely “new” person with a makeover. Guess what you are?
Offensively, this works well. If you’re dealing with a chick, and you want to engage all senses – create externals that address those things. It doesn’t need to be elaborate. Words, Touch, and Pulling away are often all you need.
10. Center of the Universe Thinking
this idea that someone has to be managing the emotional heart of your tiny community. I think women do that a lot
Girls rarely go out solo. They go out in groups. When you approach a group, you’re often dealing with this sort of dynamic. Every girl in the group has a different role. One girl might be the draw – so pretty or loud that she draws attention. One may be the gate keeper. One might be the cop. But one who might not be the “leader” aka alpha female – who’s active and engaging with you – she might be the heart. There are other characters in any girl’s groups – there’s no exhaustive list – but most pick up literature focuses on “besting” or “winning over” the friends of the “target” in order to steal her away. If a player doesn’t get the full social dynamics of the group – non-stop calls and text messages to your chick’s phone.
It all stems back to this community idea and being the heart. How this one chick feels within in her little community, her need to manage the emotions of everyone around her – important thing to know and “defuse”.
11. Repeat a Lie and Then Move the Goal Posts
“I think there’s an incredible amount of deep resentment for women in America about divisions of labor,” said sociologist Lisa Wade when I asked her to comment on this contradiction. “And what social scientists are finding now is that there is a correlation between equal division of labor and better sex.”
So keep in mind this is an article about married women cheating on their husbands. Without actually saying it, the premise is that married women are getting better sex outside of the marriage. More and deeper orgasms, more fulfillment.
Let me ask you this? Are the guys that they’re sleeping with also doing the dishes, taking out the trash, and fixing meals for the kids? Bang a chick out and clean up her bathroom?
LOL
Propaganda that women reading CNN can forward to their girlfriends and husbands in order to extract more housework out of men. Keep in mind that women’s cleanliness standards tend to be far more exacting. She’s the one that needs the closet to be “organized”, not him.
And if he’s cleaner than her, cooks better, does whatever traditional female task better – she often “playfully” mocks him for it.
I’m reminded of a NYT article about Wall Street Women making far more money than their husbands. One line in particular that I recall went something like “I got a 7 figure bonus and my husband thinks I should still suck his dick…”
So in terms of adapting this “household labor” meme to your short game – You’re not going to do it, and she’d better be okay with that.
12. The Burden
These women seem to be finding that no amount of sensitivity or goodwill on the part of their husbands can save them from the fact that in every arena, from work to marriage to parenthood, they’re always doing more for less.
No amount? Then why even bother?
13. Blame it on my Mama
Twenty or thirty years ago they might have opted for divorce, because surely there was another man out there who could do better in this role, who could satisfy them completely. But a lot of these women are children of divorce. They lived through the difficulties divorce can create.
Better that I cheat, rather than force divorce on my children.
Earlier in the paragraph is the real key – No man can satisfy them completely. Truth or not, they believe this. So if that’s the state of affairs, why should men try?
Indeed, what players have found is what Patrice O’Neal said – You can’t make a woman happy.
His example was that his girl wanted to flowers, and he bought her flowers. Then candy, he bought her candy. Then the movies – and she still wanted more. None of these things had satisfied her.
This is what this article is telling us, though not telling us directly. Because to admit that no one man could make any given woman eternally happy would send such an honest message that this whole house of cards would come falling down.
14. What Marriage Means to the Author, and by Proxy many women
At the time I married, marriage had felt like a panacea; it was a bond that would provide security, love, friendship, stability, and romance — the chance to have children and nice dishes, to be introduced as someone’s wife. It promised to expand my circle of family and improve my credit score, to tether me to something wholesome and give my life meaning.
Some of these are honorable platitudes – the others are very selfish and vain.
The player can look at these things, and makes sure that he offers NONE of them. Because the downside of being “Mr. Right”, being “A catch” is that you’ve got a good chance of ending up like these husbands.
15. Being Corporate
valuing their marriages for the things it could offer and outsourcing the rest
So that’s about 2500 words reacting to “news of the day”.
Lessons
The TL DR is that married women are admitting to infidelity more, but mainstream media is on the one hand blaming men for not doing enough of the “invisible labor” and the household labor, but also that women expect too much fulfillment from relationships.
The player then takes advantage of the state of affairs by
- Offering sanctuary.
- Not emulating what their husbands do and don’t do.
- Not expecting to be a woman’s everything.
-Archie