Beta Bus Boy

One of the things that soaks up a lot of my time and keeps me from updating this blog regularly is that I’m a part time graduate student at a major southern university (SEC fans would recognize it in a heartbeat). The university is large enough that it has its own internal bus system for transportation. Parking is a nightmare (an artificially induced one; this is the south – there’s easily enough land for extra parking, but the university chooses not to provide it) and expensive (for the south – by northeastern standards its quite tame). My finances are not what they once were (a topic for another post), and parking assignments are awarded in a pseudo-lottery system that gives preference to those who have more credit hours (not me – I’m fairly new to the school and on the part time plan), so I’ve got a totally craptastic parking spot.

The bus I ride is typically packed to the gills at peak times (the 15 minutes between class periods). Today I happened to arrive a bit early, so the bus was relatively lightly full. In this case, that when I got on at the parking deck I easily got a seat, but a few stops later all the seats were full – but with plenty of standing room left.

We pull up to the next stop and about 6-7 people get on the bus (mostly girls; the campus is about 60% female). Beta Bus Boy, sitting across from me, gallantly vacates his seat and points to the hottest of the girls (a blonde, and a mere 7 at best which means she doesn’t really stick out from the crowd around here) and offers her his seat. She looks at him like he’s crazy. He proceeds down the line through two other girls who also politely decline. Then girl #4 (a 6 Asian), standing behind him, steps in and takes the seat, all the while ignoring him.

I do nothing but smirk. I’m married and have little interest in these girls. Even if I weren’t married, they’re not especially hot by campus standards (the campus is 60% female and like most 18-22 year olds, they’re mostly 6s and 7s). This move, all on its own, earns me the interest of the random girl across from me. Granted, she’s a 5 (who would easily be a 6 if she lost about 15 pounds). Still, she’s now checking me out through the corner of her eye.

A few stops later, a bunch of people get off including the random girl across from me. Girl #1, the hottest, now happily sits down in the vacated seat. Not one of the girls has given Beta Bus Boy a second look. The whole thing is a real-life and much tamer version of this video that Roissy posted a while back.

In a sane world, Beta Bus Boy would have at least gotten a thank you and a smile. But we don’t live in a sane world.

The Small Child Cockblock

I love my son dearly, but sometimes he’s the biggest cockblock around. He’s 7 months old, so it’s not like he’s doing it intentionally. But when he hits another growth spurt or decides to cut another tooth and then won’t go to sleep (and therefore won’t let us sleep) until midnight but insists on waking up (and therefore waking us up) at 5:30 again, he doesn’t leave us with a lot of energy for sex. Unsurprisingly, this hits my wife much harder than me (stereotypes of male and female sexuality have an awful lot of basis in reality), but occasionally it hits me as well.

It’s important for us men in this situation to realize that unless we were conned into children we didn’t really want (which is decidedly not my case – my son was wanted, and I have the fertility treatment bills to prove it) this is not your wife’s fault. Small children are tiring and demanding. And although I’m disappointed, I’m not really upset at the kid, either. He’s just being a kid – it’s what they do.

But I’m totally going to remember it when he’s sixteen and have an absolute blast returning the cockblocking favor. Mwahahaha!

american wife fuck son

I just have to say… when you write a blog related to sex in any way, you get some really, really weird shit in your search refers.

That is all.

News Flash: Women Prefer Older Men

There are a lot of critics of Game out there. Most of them really are blinded by ideology, to an extent that brings to mind Galileo and the church. But I like to approach the world with a scientific mindset, and the scientific method requires always being critical of any idea, not matter how well established.

[As an aside: One of the reasons I gave Game a whirl is because as near as I can tell it's quite possibly the best peer reviewed concept in the modern body of knowledge. Unlike most modern scientific tests which are typically run by one team, and then maybe reproduced by a small handful of other researchers, Game has been tested by thousands of "field researchers" in perhaps hundreds of thousands of individual "experiments." That's an awful lot of supporting data.]

Sadly, I seldom see Game criticized on anything like legitimate issues, even though there is one that’s always been bothering me: the “Cougar” phenomenon. Game tells us that women prefer status and give low priority to looks. A natural consequence is that women should prefer older men, generally, as a proxy for status. It’s admittedly an imperfect proxy, but usually a rather decent one. Also, Game tells us that men generally prefer younger, hotter women.

Yet supposedly there’s a huge Cougar/Cub phenomenon going on all around us. What gives?

Roissy explains it typically as a bunch of used up older women settling for the young men who will have them. Sometimes, the reasoning goes, these are just very beta guys who can’t get girls their own age or younger. Sometimes they’re very alpha guys just getting started and “learning the ropes.” Makes sense, as far as it goes.

Before I learned about Game, I’d always thought women were adjusting to a higher preference for looks as they can afford to. In the modern world, the typical beta-provider status that women would have sought after before is less important than ever. Women don’t need a provider; they can typically pull in decent salaries on their own. So the superficial qualities take a higher preference. I was right, but I misunderstood the female version of superficial qualities to mean “looks” rather than what we call “Game”. In hindsight, this seems like it might play a tiny part (looking good is a small part of Game), but not a very big one.

So what’s going on?

What if it’s simpler than any of us thought? What if the whole Cougar phenomenon is just bullshit? It looks like that may be the case. A researcher in Wales did a study of online dating forums to try and find out just how widespread the phenomenon is.

After examining the age preferences expressed in 22,400 singles ads on popular dating websites in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, he found no sizable cohort of women seeking younger men. To the contrary, the share of lionesses wanted men their own age or older. Nor did he find evidence for the proliferation of cubs: the overwhelming majority of men displayed their eons-old preference for younger women.

Women prefer older men and men prefer younger women. Who knew?

Just Fuck Me

My wife and I have a pretty reasonable personal library in our home these days. Combined, I think we’re pushing close to a thousand volumes. Not huge. Certainly not on par with, say, Thomas Jefferson. But not bad for a relatively young couple. It’s a pretty solid mix of fiction, non-fiction, text books, you name it. We love knowledge, love reading, and love books.

However, I’ve somewhat switched non-fiction book buying tendencies in recent times. Once upon a time I tended to buy pretty much anything I was reading, or interested in reading. These days, I do a lot of browsing at the bookstores (or using Amazon.com’s “Search Inside” feature… proper application of this can often get you a pretty decent look at the meat of the book absolutely free). I’m a lot more exclusive about which books I pick up.

Why? Because I’ve discovered that a huge proportion of non-fiction books (I’d say in the 70-80% range) don’t contain any value once you understand what the main point of the book is.

Let me give an example: the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series. The main idea of the book is this:

1. You can conceptually divide everything you buy into two classes: “assets” and “liabilities.”
2. Forget the technical definitions of these terms. For the purpose of this book, “assets” are anything that generate net income. “Liabilities” are anything that costs money over time – or even that just fails to generate income.
3. If you want to get rich, spend your money on assets instead of liabilities.

Seriously, that’s it. Once you get that concept, there’s not really anything else of much worth in the entire book. Or, as near as I can tell from in-store browsing, the entire rest of the series.

Let me give another example: Just Fuck Me by Eve Kingsley. I have not read this book. I have not even browsed it at the store, and it doesn’t have “Look Inside” enabled on Amazon.com. All I’ve done is read the title and the product description on Amazon:

“You’re the Man… Act Like One!” Look, I know you’re not a mind reader, so I’m going to be blunt… The majority of women like to be fucked. And I mean really fucked. Yes, the media has lied to you. Sure, there are some women that want to lay on their backs, look into your eyes, and gently rock back and forth, but most of us want you to channel the power of the Sun through your penis and give us a good, solid pounding. Act like you want it, for God’s sake! In this book, I’m going to lay out exactly what the majority of women want and show you exactly how to give it to them. I’ve got a section just for you and one for your female partner, so you can feel 100% comfortable letting loose on her vagina in the way she’s secretly craving. Some of the topics we’ll cover… The Alpha Male – It’s more than just being an ex-fratboy douchebag, who still thinks he’s on the high school football team. I’ll clue you in. Dirty Talk – Trust me, she wants it. If she didn’t, she’d fuck a mime. Speaking of, did you know Marcel Marceau was divorced three times? Enough said. Role Playing – How she really feels about pretending to be the babysitter, a whore, and a student looking for a little “extra credit.” I’ll take you through the top 11 Alpha Male fantasies…including one so controversial, I can’t even mention it here. The Art of Being Assertive – Sack up and take control! What to do…and what not to do. Sexual Communication – Both you and your partner have needs and good communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is crucial when it comes to getting them on the table. I’ll show you how to communicate “Alpha Male Style.” You’ll learn what to say…and how to say it. Now that I’ve got you all hyped up and extremely aware of the need to please your woman, let’s go about succeeding at it. Let’s get down to brass tacks. What are you waiting for? Buy the book already! Eve Kingsley is a feminist writer based in San Francisco. She teaches couples how to push the boundaries of a sexual relationship to create new levels of honesty, intimacy, and trust.

A year ago I would probably have ignored this book entirely. Fortunately, I didn’t stumble across it a year ago; I stumbled across it a month or two ago. In the context of Game, this concept makes perfect sense.

At near the same time, I read this post by Roissy. Now, I have never sat down with a ruler and measured my wife’s anatomy. Nor do I have any real intention or desire to do so. However, the post resonated with me on a couple of levels.

* My wife isn’t that big on receiving oral sex. She doesn’t hate it, but it’s usually nothing special for her.
* Before I discovered Game, if you’d surveyed my wife after every session she would probably have ranked sex somewhere between “terrible” and “tolerable”, with the bulk of the ratings on the lower side of that.
* My wife has had enjoyable sex, but has never had an orgasm (yeah, kind of beta for me to admit that; anonymous blogging ftw).

Given all of that, she seemed like a prime candidate for the “long C-V distance” type that Roissy describes. Take these two ideas together (the “just fuck me” thesis and the “long C-V distance” thesis) and they come to a similar conclusion: maybe I need to alter my style and just go with it.

One last data point: my wife had always seemed to like sex better when it was a bit rougher. Again, pre-Game this made absolutely no sense to me. It conflicted with anything and everything I had ever been taught about female sexuality.

The scenario: The wife was trying to be generous and offering up sex even though she very clearly didn’t actually want it. It was late or latish, we were already in bed, and both tired. In the pre-Game days, this scenario also would likely include the fact that it had been many days, perhaps even weeks, since we’d done anything.

Old approach: “Are you sure you want to, dear? I don’t really want to push you into anything you don’t want, or hurt you if you’re not into it.” (Sexual discomfort was a very big problem for her for a long time, which was a big part of the “terrible” ratings.) Her: “Yeah, let’s just be quick and go to bed.” Either nothing happens because I back down or we spend 15-20 terribly awkward minutes before I have a somewhat lame orgasm and we both go to bed unhappy. Initial penetration is a long, slow, drawn out mess that’s typically very uncomfortable even though I’m trying my damndest not to hurt her. In my head, the whole time, I feel like I’m taking advantage of her.

New approach: “OK.” And I just go for it. Very light, very short foreplay, and then we go. Typically, she’s still somewhat dry. Penetration is quick. Like everything with Roissy, I find I have to tone it down a bit: I’m not just ramming it in. But… it’s pretty fast. Maybe 5-10 seconds. I’m much more aggressive, much more relaxed, and just go. Mental model has changed: now in my head I’m forcing myself to think, “she’s trying to do something nice for me. Just let her you idiot.”

The difference is huge. Bulletin 3 is, as of now, still true: she’s not yet having orgasms. But if you sampled her now, the ratings would range from “tolerable” to “good,” with an occasional “very good” thrown in there. Not where I want it to be – but an amazing difference. Penetration is sometimes still uncomfortable (though less often than I’d expected), and once I’m in she lubes up fast. Often she finds sex feeling at least somewhat good, even if she completely wasn’t in the mood at the beginning.

Another big change in our sex life: on average, it’s gotten a lot rougher. It’s still nothing like BDSM or anything – more or less vanilla sex, just on the rough side. I’ve moved past my mental block (and it really was my mental block) and accepted it, and discovered that hey, she was trying to tell me what she wanted all along and I should’ve just blocked society out of my mind. Thanks to the above, and to Athol, for helping me get past that block.

Best of all, as she starts enjoying sex more (or at least hating it less), she’s far more receptive to it, and even initiates a lot more often. As an example, we’ve now had sex every day for five days in a row. We talked about it last night, and neither of us could remember for sure but we came to the conclusion that this is either a record or tied for it.

The ideas in this post are only a part of what’s gotten us here. A lot else has contributed. I’m ridiculously busy these days, and this blog is relatively low priority in my life, but I do plan to share some further reflections in the future.

Also, I recognize that the current streak is probably a high point. I don’t think we’re at the point, yet, where daily or near daily sex is “normal” for our relationship. We’ll see how she’s feeling tonight. I’m going to make the attempt at a record breaker – but if it doesn’t happen, it was good while it lasted.

TV/Movie Game

One difficult aspect of Game in a long term relationship is finding the right balance. Too much alpha will just push your woman away – especially if you’ve been a little (or more than a little) beta for a long time and you’re trying to make up for it. You have to find the right balance and keep it there, and that can be more than a little tricky.

TV and movies offer up a nice opportunity, and I’ve been making quite good use of it. If we’re watching a show together and a female character does something unacceptable, I calmly and clearly outline “what I’d do” in that situation. The scare quotes are there because typically it’s not actually what I’d do in that kind of situation – it’s generally exaggerated a little bit on purpose and for effect. What effect? Signals. This is a chance to send clear Alpha signals: I am not a wimp. I will not put up with behavior like that. I do not need to put up with childish behavior in order to get laid. I am not a loser like that beta boy on the screen who just bowed down to kiss the feet of a spoiled twat.

The best part, however, is that I accomplish all of this without directing hostile or negative energy toward my wife. You’re definitely not accusing her of anything, so you avoid putting her on the defensive. Indeed, she even gets to play the good guy too, agreeing with me that the girl in question is beyond the pale and shouldn’t behave like that, and that my hypothetical response is entirely appropriate. Instead, she gets to feel like a good girl (of course she would never act that way). Nevertheless, the signals are sent.

Of course, you can still take this technique too far. Advocating an extreme response that’s truly beyond the pale is still probably going to cause your wife/gf to freak out a little bit about the psychopath sitting next to her. But you can be a little more forceful than you might be in other situations.

After the Peak

Welmer has a nice post up on the Spearhead today about the pretty, pretty lie that we let women tell that their sexual peak is in their mid 30s. His basic point – that women actually reach their peak in their youth, just as men do – is, I think, pretty biologically sound. I think it’s also pretty clear that what we identify as a “sexual peak” is, in fact, women trying to make the most of their last years of fertility. Whether it’s for sexual power, as Welmer claims, or a last attempt to squeeze as much reproductive success as possible in the final days (or, in my opinion, both), it’s clear that what is going on here is not exactly what is claimed by the “sexual peak” advocates.

I do, however, want to point out something important. Welmer goes on to make the following statement:

The point is that without sexual viability, the power of most women in this culture is reduced to whatever is afforded by rote chivalry. And while that chivalry affords them a great deal of latitude, if doesn’t provide them with the meaningful significance of a younger woman who still turns heads- and can have babies.

Sadly, I think this has largely become true in our modern culture. But I do not think it’s universally or even biologically true. In a healthy, functional society there are very important roles for women to play after they’ve advanced to a more or less infertile age. The obvious ones are mother (continuing to raise the last few children born) and grandmother. But in many cultures there is a certain level of worldly wisdom that a woman of that age carries that younger women don’t. You can still see remnants of it in today’s culture, although it’s fading. As with so much else, it’s strongest in religious groups, but it’s still visible in other places. The wise, matriarchal grandmother figure that guides an extended family as it grows is a powerful figure in art, literature, and real life.

In the optimal case, a woman goes through profound personal growth during the early years of child rearing and establishing a family, such that by the time menopause comes around and brings its inevitable infertility she has found some other form of power and/or value to bring to society.

As a culture, we now deemphasize this aspect of growth and instead put our emphasis on trying to stay young forever and have it all. The value of these roles has been devalued by our culture in precisely the same ways, for precisely the same reasons, and by precisely the same people as the value of beta provider males. It’s also having a very similar negative effect on our society.

The Mutual Submission Deadlock

Athol Kay today describes the evolution of his marriage into a relationship where he assumed more dominance. As always, the whole post is worth reading. But I wanted to comment on one particular part:

In Jennifer’s case she was so naturally submissive that she didn’t take control over things, but we’d end up in sort of mutual submission deadlocks. “What do you want to do?” “I dunno what do you want to do?”

The Mutual Submission Deadlock has been one of the absolute biggest problems for me to overcome in my own marriage, and for very similar reasons. I am not particularly submissive, but I am very introverted (borderline Asperger’s syndrome). I’ve also had decades of societal and (much heavier) family pressure towards a personality of not pushing my own desires on other people. This has ended up pushing me towards just not telling other people what I want, and just expecting them to magically know. My father and my less-obnoxious brother have this exact same problem as well.

The solution is really quite easy: just voice preferences when I actually have them. This answers the complaint that the original poster Athol refers to had. This is by no means a heavy handed “my way or the highway” style of dominance. In a way, it’s not even really dominance at all. But it solves a couple of major relationship issues.

First, when we’re truly in a deadlock it resolves it. A preference has now been voiced. If she truly has no preference, the issue is settled.

Second, in the (far more common) case when she does have a preference, the burden is now on her. If she doesn’t like my preference, she can come up with an alternative. Quite often, this is what happens – and a fair amount of the time, we even choose her preference over mine. Clearly, this is not heavy handed dominance. Yet even so, with the newer approach I’ve navigated the situation without coming across as a pussy. My preferences for things like where to eat are often very minimal. For example, I tend toward simple tastes, and often get similar meals wherever we go; it makes many restaurants truly interchangeable to me. But by expressing a preference, I am now not just a wimp letting her guide me along – or worse, just a “kid” for whom she has to make all of the decisions. I am a man with preferences, thoughts, and taste of my own. I am just willing to compromise on the little things that truly aren’t that important.

I still struggle with this, though. I’ve got over three decades of practice at hiding my preferences. Letting them out is neither instinctive nor natural for me at the moment. But I’m working on it, and it’s definitely getting better.

On a completely unrelated note:

By way of comparison, back in the day I passed on dating a particular feminist friend that I was interested in. Nice girl, smart, pretty just with this huge feminist chip on her shoulder that I couldn’t be bothered with. I just slowly found it a turn off and never pursued her. As far as I could tell in our little Christian circle of friends she never ended up dating anyone, so if her goal was not to be taken advantage of by men – mission accomplished.

This describes my sister at a note perfect level.