When Women Shit Test Other Women

Get a group of up to a dozen men or so together and you’re going to end up with a pretty simple social hierarchy pretty quickly. One man will establish himself as AMOG. Anywhere from one to three others will be what you might call “lieutenants.” There might be up to one or two omegas. Every guy knows what I’m talking about – that guy in the group who’s a total loser – and obnoxious as all hell – but he’s our total loser, so he’s OK. The hierarchy will almost always settle itself out very quickly. I’ve seen it happen within hours in groups of men where no more than any two had even met each other before. The status quo will basically remain the same until and unless another man decides to challenge for dominance – but even then, the challenge is usually quick and decisive.

Groups of women are totally different. Women obsess over relative status. Their social groups form incredibly complex status hierarchies, and they don’t stay constant. They’ll shift from day to day, hour to hour and even minute to minute. The hierarchies also don’t follow anything a man would recognize as standard logical rules. For instance, in standard logic if A > B and B > C then A > C. Not so in women’s social hierarchies. Woman A can have higher status than woman B, with woman B having higher status than woman C… and yet in some cases woman C can still have higher status than woman A.

To most men the complex rules that govern all of this are entirely incomprehensible. But there are two basic rules that are the overwhelming drivers: a woman’s looks, the relative status of her partner and displayed wealth. You can see these effects at work very clearly in a stereotypical high school setting where you have your very small click of alpha females who are typically among the most attractive girls in the school, dating the high status guys (football quarterback, etc) and decked out in the designer clothes that daddy paid for. But beyond these rules a whole host of more subtle issues also play a role. Gossip gives women a way to lower the status of women around them, relative to themselves. Acquiring new status items to show off – the latest designer handbag, etc. Talking about whatever great achievement their partner or their child just had.

And, in some cases, women will actually even shit test each other. I’ve seen this happen to my wife on multiple occasions, but today I’ll share just one story.

A few years ago on my birthday we came back into town (this was during our brief out of state hiatus). We staid at my parents’ place. My wife and mother both offered to bake cakes that year, but I specifically requested not to have one. I had gone a good while without eating much junk food and didn’t want to fall off the wagon. I’ve got a crazy sweet tooth (damn you mom for passing that on), and once I get started it’s hard for me to stop. So no cake. Then Wilson and Emo Bear show up. Emo, very definitely trying to show up both my wife and mother, has baked a cake and brought it along. Make no bones about it: this was a female shit testing another female. Or, really, two other females: my wife and my mother.

This was before I had a clue about Game. Nevertheless, in this case I was the right one to handle it (despite the test being aimed at them), and I aced it. I looked her straight in the eye and very calmly (and publicly) told her thank you for the cake, but I’d specifically asked for there not to be one. Smack, shit test shut down.

In most cases, however, when a woman shit tests another woman her partner (or brother or father or son or whatever) really can’t step in to handle it. The targeted woman must handle it herself, or she will (at best) just be the victim of another shit test later. A good example of this happened to us a few years ago, also during our out-of-state hiatus. Hermione and I were attending a well known SEC school at the time. Clark and his wife attended another well known SEC school that happened to be a fairly big rival of our school (not the main rival, but a big rivalry). They came to visit us one fall so that we could all go to the game together (it was a home game for us that year), talk shit at each other and generally have a good time. They stayed in our guest room (the five hour drive was enough to make a day trip unpleasant). In the morning, Clark’s wife got up, invaded my wife’s kitchen and started making breakfast for everyone. In and of itself, not too bad (although invasive to another woman’s turf). But then comes the rest of the morning of very subtle, “Oh look how great I am because I martyred myself and made breakfast in a stranger’s kitchen” attitude.

Unlike the cake incident, this is not my battle. There is no good way for me to interfere without lowering my wife’s status – so I don’t, I stay out of it. But Hermione doesn’t really know how to respond to this, either. A woman can’t really respond to a shit test like a man can. When a man shuts it down hard he’s alpha. When a woman shuts it down hard she’s a bitch. The only appropriate “response” I can think of would have been for her to get up earlier and start breakfast before the other woman had a chance… but that’s not very helpful after the deed’s been done.

I have noticed, however, that this kind of shit testing of other women comes most often from women who suffer from FWS. As Roissy has noted, being in love with an alpha male makes even the bitchiest of women act like beta males. Thus, there’s some truth to the chauvinistic old cliche that a man should control his wife if she’s acting out in public. It’s not so much that he should take her home and beat her for being a shrew as that if he’s sufficiently alpha in his relationship then she will be substantially less shrewish outside of the home as well as in it.

Frustrated Woman Syndrome II

Yesterday’s post on Clark’s problems yielded a lot of incredibly good feedback. I haven’t had time to respond to all of it individually, as it deserves, but it was all very useful. Unfortunately, I left off one of the biggest issues: Clark isn’t yet ready to even acknowledge that there’s a problem. Until that happens, there’s really almost nothing I can do, and like many commenters I worry very much that he won’t be ready to take that leap until it’s too late. Until then, I think the best advice came from DB:

Schedule more time together….earn trust and establish a sense of comradery. Show him by example…how you deal with your wife. Throw out examples of scenarios of instances where you calmly and firmly addressed a problem and by your behavior divert confrontation….and create attraction. (For instance….”Hey the other night, my wife said this and I told her this! I don’t tolerate that…what do you think?”) Then….wait. You wait for him to ask you…..how you do it. How is it that you know so much about this subject. Once his interest is sparked…..you open the gates and let him in on GAME.

In the meanwhile, we move on to example #2 of FWS. Last week I detailed the complete disaster that is my brother Wilson’s marriage. I also mentioned how feminism had been a disaster for my sister Hillary. Time to fill in the missing story: my brother Chewbacca.

Anybody who knows him would understand instantly why I picked the name Chewie. He’s a big lovable teddy bear. He’s huge. 6’2″ and probably about 270lbs. He’s also… just the jolly green giant. Only not green. He’s one of the most truly laid back people I’ve ever met. He’s also brilliant. I don’t know his exact tested IQ, but it’s at least as high as mine (high 140s), possibly higher. He’s a big geek, big time into gaming. Especially role playing (Dungeons and Dragons type stuff), board games and card games. And he’s really good at them. Usually that wouldn’t be an alpha skill, except that his wife is just as big of a geek as he is. She’s also, not to put it too delicately, just about as big of a person as he is… almost as tall and almost as heavy. Only she’s not as good at the games, so in their frame it’s an alpha skill.

Unlike Emo Bear (Wilson’s wife), Brienne is actually pretty intelligent and pretty cool. Or, rather, she was pretty cool when they got married. The problem is, Chewie’s just too darned laid back. Brienne jumps down his throat all the time for the tiniest of things, and he just sits there and takes it. And takes it. Until finally he explodes. Then he goes back to taking it again. There’s also a big disconnect because her female status instincts are kicking in. She wants a nicer, bigger house, nicer things, more money… and Chewie really just doesn’t give a shit. If he’s got tasty food on the table and a fun game to play with friends that he likes he’s genuinely happy. He has next to no ambition at his job. He makes a decent middle class salary – higher than median US household salary, but not by a ton. He’s worked at the same place since he graduate from college. He’s survived a round of massive layoffs, and now he’s one of a very small number of people left in his division. A division, by the way, that is unlikely to ever grow much again. Yet she keeps pushing him and pushing him to go in and demand a raise. There’s nobody left who knows his job, so she thinks he’s got them by the balls. In reality, if he pushes too hard his job is likely to go away.

Unlike Wilson, at least he explodes every now and then. That somewhat keeps it in check. And also unlike Wilson and Emo Bear, Brienne has some genuine respect for him, as she should. He’s got a lot and done a lot that’s worthy of respect. But even so, their marriage is definitely sliding down the long, slippery slope toward AMC land – just as mine was before I discovered Game, although perhaps a bit faster and harder. On the other hand, he’s got an easier fight than I did. His wife, frankly, is around a 4. She’s actually somewhat cute, which is why she can manage that despite her weight. But really, he doesn’t have a high bar to meet. All he really needs to do to fix things is just to learn to stand up to her when she jumps all over him. It’s just a series of shit tests that he’s completely and utterly failing.

I haven’t yet brought up the concepts of Game to him. In Chewie’s case, I think he’d be very intellectually open to it if it were brought up in the correct way. It would, however, be very difficult for him to do. He’s just not a very alpha person. Then again, as I mentioned earlier, he just doesn’t have that big of a hill to climb to turn things around – if he catches it in time.

The main reason I tell Chewie’s story today, though, is to tie it in with yesterday’s post. Much like Clark’s wife, Brienne has gotten bitchier and bitchier (to put it bluntly) over the years they’ve been married. And as I mentioned yesterday, I believe this is a direct result of frustration with her beta husband, hence my diagnosis of FWS. As with Clark’s wife, she honestly cares about her husband. Even more than Clark’s wife she truly doesn’t understand why she’s unhappy. And, as is common with FWS, the biggest targets of her bitchiness (other than her beta husband) tend to be women with alpha (relative to her husband) partners. In both of these examples that has come to be my wife.

The alphas themselves (again, me in this case) come under fire as well. But for us it’s relatively easy to handle. Just continue to be alpha and shut down the shit tests these women lob our way. It can be much more difficult for our partners to handle.

Frustrated Woman Syndrome

I have this friend. Let’s call him Clark. Clean cut, all American guy. Southern Baptist, very religious – but not in the asshole way that Southern Baptists are prone to be. The kind of guy who’s followed all of the “wisdom” his elders have given him. He goes to church regularly. He worked hard in school. He was frugal and didn’t party. He got his degree, and took a crappy job in middle-of-nowhere southern USA (I’m talking seriously rural) for a bit because it was the only job he could get. He managed to snag a state job right before his girlfriend finished her undergraduate degree. It was a big pay raise (which is sad, because the pay was still about 30% less than my first software engineering job), and it was enough that they could feel much more comfortable in their imminent wedding. Also, it was a move back home to where we grew up, which is a relatively large city for the south, so no more BFE.

They got married, and she commuted about two hours to finish grad school. For a couple of years, while she was finishing, they were really happy. They’re both very religious. They’ve got a bit of the “the man rules the house” religious thing going on. She’s a good southern girl. He’s not a pushover, so he’s not just playing doormat like so many AMCs. He’s firm in his beliefs, firm in his morals, firm in his friendships. After graduation, she moved to be with him (instead of the other way). Of course, it helped that his new (or old, depending on how you look at it) location was a good place for her to be, career wise, anyway.

But all is not well in paradise. He’s still at the state job. Now she’s a minor partner in a brand new – and very successful – private enterprise. Her starting salary was significantly higher than his then current salary. Now, a few years later, she makes more than twice his salary. Alas, this is not the only beta issue in their relationship. Clark isn’t too bad, but he’s got a few very beta behaviors that raise their head every now and then. He covers his eyes at nudity in TV and movies, and she tells him when it’s OK to open them. He puts on a good show of being honestly unaware that she’s significantly overweight. Not the “she’s overweight but I don’t mind” attitude, mind you. I very delicately mentioned the issue once, when she completely wasn’t around, in one of those “she actually looks good despite it kind of ways.” His reaction wasn’t anger that I’d brought it up, or frustration with it, or excusing. It was complete denial. Also, he tends to pretty much just cave when it comes to their home, which is almost completely devoid of male presence. There’s not even really a significant man cave, although they have a three bedroom home that, until very recently, was only occupied by the two of them. And he’s definitely a pedestaler. He’s got her very, very high up on one.

They just had a baby (hence the house no longer just being the two of them), and that’s making the issues a lot worse. She doesn’t talk about it, but she’s very clearly going through the, “Now I want to stay home and be a mommy” phase. But she really can’t. They’ve started accumulating the kinds of things that end up owning you. A nice house, nice furniture, nice middle class cars. All stuff that they can comfortably afford on their current income – they’ve been smart about that. But stuff that they certainly couldn’t afford on just Clark’s income.

So she wants to stay home, very clearly to those who know her, but she can’t. He’s already fighting a huge uphill alpha battle because of the income discrepancy. And there are the other beta behaviors on top of it. The result is a phenomenon I’m starting to recognize as “Frustrated Woman Syndrome,” and now that I know about Game and can recognize it, I see that it’s a huge problem in the modern western world. She subconsciously wants a much more alpha partner than she’s getting. On top of that, she’s followed the feminist play book for doing everything “right” to make herself happy. Only it’s not working. She’s not happy. She’s frustrated in her relationship, frustrated that she can’t play mommy, completely unhappy and worst of all she doesn’t even really understand why.

This has effects outside of their marriage, which is common with FWS. The main effect is that she’s transformed from a nice, well behaved, fun person into kind of a bitch. The effect is most pronounced around certain kinds of people: men who are more alpha than her husband; women who are partnered with such men; women who seem to be higher status than her (measured by shiny things). She obviously still cares greatly about her husband, and I’m not even convinced that she’s consciously aware of how unhappy she is. I’m certain that if you described her current behavior to her past self, her past self would be appalled. But if something doesn’t change, this is likely to end badly.

The solution is fairly clear: introduce Clark to Game. The difficulty is how to do so in such a way that he’ll be open to it. Unlike my brother Wilson, I’m fairly certain that he’d respond well to it if it were communicated in the right way. Unfortunately, the Game community as it exists on the internet is totally not the right way to broach it to him. He’d be appalled by Roissy. I’d buy him a copy of Athol’s book, but I think it would be too risqué for him. Even broaching the topic is a little tricky, because the standard evo-psych approach to Game wouldn’t carry much weight with a Creationist. Also, I’m pretty certain that framing it in terms of sex (the main motivator of most of the Game community) isn’t the right approach here. It would be better to frame it in terms of making her happier in the marriage.

So today the question is for my readers. How do you introduce a person like this to Game before it’s too late?

Permanent PMS

As I’ve mentioned before my wife has a hormonal disorder called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). The name is somewhat misleading because it’s no longer just used to describe women with cysts on their ovaries. It turns out that the root of the problem is actually hormonal. The root problem is that PCOS women produce too many androgens (male hormones) and it throws their body out of whack. Symptoms can include cysts on the ovaries (for which the syndrome was originally named), erratic ovulation (menstrual cycles can be longer than normal, irregular, or stop altogether for months or years on end), infertility (mostly due to the menstrual problems, but there are other issues) and extreme weight gain. In fact, PCOS is the leading cause of female infertility. It’s estimated that 5-10% of women suffer from PCOS, although many are undiagnosed.

My wife is 23 and was diagnosed with PCOS in her late teens (just about at the time we got married). We got extremely fortunate, in that she got recommended at one point to one of the leading specialists on PCOS in the nation.

If you have PCOS, go to a specialist. Seriously. Trust me on this. Even if you have to pay out of pocket. The state of knowledge on this disease has increased dramatically in the last decade and most of your run of the mill gynecologists aren’t adequately trained to treat you. They think they are, but they’re very out of date. You will get much better treatment and advice from a fertility specialist even if you’re not trying to get pregnant.

The good news about PCOS is that it’s highly treatable with diet and exercise, especially if you catch it young before the weight gain gets totally out of control. Many PCOS women end up morbidly obese by their early 30s, at which point it’s extremely difficult to treat the problem. Interestingly, despite the fact that it’s the androgens that are out of whack, PCOS turns out to be primarily a problem with insulin, which is why weight gain is such a common symptom.

The typical recommendation for PCOS women is a low or lowish carb diet. Our doctor specifically mentioned the South Beach diet. We’ve had extremely good success on a paleo style diet (which actually isn’t all that different from South Beach), and many, many PCOS women also report good results from a paleo style diet. After a few months pretty solidly on a paleo style diet, my wife and I had both lost a decent amount of weight and her periods, which had completely stopped before, started up again. Along with her regular cycles, her sex drive came back as well. This is also pretty common – many (but not all) women with PCOS have drastically lowered libidos.

Unfortunately, you pretty much have to stick with the diet. It’s not a case of “try it until you’re cured and then go back to eating whatever you like.” It’s more or less a lifetime dietary change. We got pretty busy and stressed out in the latter part of 2010, mostly due to moving twice within six months. One very unfortunate side effect of that is that we started neglecting our diet and exercise. We’ve both gained a little bit of weight back, and my wife’s periods have stopped again.

About a week before Lent started we made a push to get our diet back on track. We also made sticking to it a bit of a joint Lent resolution for ourselves. We’re already seeing good results again only a few weeks in. Our weight is starting to drop again (albeit slowly). My wife’s hormones are starting to pick back up again. She’s showing signs that her cycles are returning… but they’re moving slowly right now. The shitty part is, she’s been slowly moving through the PMS part of her cycle for almost 3 weeks now. We’re quite confident that if we stick to the diet and exercise things will straighten themselves out.

But let me tell you, three weeks of PMS sucks.

Alpha Move: Take Her to the Shooting Range

Shooting is manly. Shooting well is an alpha trait. Shooting better than her is best of all, if you can manage it.

Most women think they hate guns until they actually try shooting and find out that it’s really fun. A good friend of mine is engaged to a fairly liberal woman. She’s been preparing for law school so that she could be a human rights lawyer for the UN (I think she’s given up on that; he’s an officer in the Army and she’s finally just given in and accepted that his career doesn’t keep him in one place long enough for her to go to a prestigious law school). At the beginning of their relationship I’d have pegged her to be one of the most anti-gun people around. A few months ago I wrote to him asking some advice on firearms (he’s one of the most gun knowledgeable people I know, and I’m in the market; he gave great advice, too) for myself and my wife. His response just about killed me: “Well, I got my fiancée a CZ-75 P-07 Duty and she loves it.”

Most women, even extremely liberal women, do find that it’s quite enjoyable once they actually spend some time around it. And being the one to introduce her to it puts you in the Alpha mode, especially if you’re actually any good at it.

A few days ago Hermione and I made our second trip to the range in as many months, trying stuff out before settling in on what to buy (our local range has some rentals available). I’ve pretty well settled in on a Springfield Armory XD-45 Tactical in black, which I rented for the second time today. My wife tried out a different gun today, a Walther P-22. She was a lot more comfortable with that, and we ended up deciding that it’s probably better to start her on a .22 like that (we haven’t quite settled on a specific gun yet, although she liked the Walther) and then move to a “real” caliber once she’s got some more practice and confidence. All in all, a good time. OK, maybe I had more fun than she did, but she did enjoy it.

Also, it didn’t hurt the alpha game that she was shooting bullets like the one on the left while I was shooting bullets like the one on the right.

My Poor, Poor Sister

Feminism doesn’t just hurt men. It also hurts women. It hurts top tier women because it creates a culture in which they can no longer hold onto their top catch man. It hurts bottom tier women because they’re sold a bill of goods and convinced that they can have much better men than they actually ever can.

It also hurts the women whom it convinces to forgo family altogether in pursuit of a high paying, high status, or deep and meaningful career. Like my sister.

I was initially going to write this in the comment sections of Vox’s fantastic post but then I realized that I had more to say than that. You could write volumes on my sister and how she demonstrates so much that is broken in society.

Where do I even begin? My sister (whom I have dubbed Hillary) is the archetypal radical feminist and has been her whole life. So radical that she’ll sit there with a straight face and tell you she’s not radical at all. How she can hold this when her views fall so far to the left of even mainstream feminism was completely beyond me, until I learned the hamster metaphor. Oh, there’s a GIANT hamster at work there. In a previous post Vox describes his experience with women and their desires to have children.

Every woman I knew in high school and college swore up and down that she didn’t want to have children. Every single one. All of them that are married, as well as some who are not, have children now. The rest wish they did. Most of the married, but childless, working women I knew said that they wanted to continue working after they had children. Only about half of them returned to their jobs and most of those who still work wish they didn’t need to do so.

This has been pretty much my experience as well. The only real difference in my case is that it was more like 70-80% of the women I knew saying they didn’t want children. I don’t know where Vox is from, but I attribute the difference to growing up in the south where feminism doesn’t have quite as much control over the general consciousness as it does in other places.

More to the point, it perfectly describes Hillary. I can’t tell you how often, loudly, emphatically and consistently throughout my life I’ve heard her say she absolutely, positively was not interested in getting married and having children. Now she’s almost 37 and completely distraught about not having any kids. Watching all three of her brothers have children within a year and a half of each other just ramped up the distress even higher. And it’s just about too late. She’s hit the wall bad over the last two years. She was always kind of pretty, and could’ve been fairly hot (probably a solid 8 or pushing at a 9) if she’d lost about 10-15 pounds and allowed herself to dress like a woman. Don’t get me wrong, she always dressed nicely. In power suits and pants and all that empowered woman crap. Even the skirts and dresses she wears trend to that look.

But damn, I don’t know what happened to her. She went and got an advanced degree at an Ivy League, graduated about two years ago, and bam. She’s gained about 30-40 pounds (maybe more) and aged about 10 years all at once. Add in the attitude she’s always had and marriage is pretty much out the door. Given that she’s a protestant minister, having children out of wedlock is pretty much a career killer, and at 37 her fertility is pretty low anyway. At best she’s got about 8 years of fertility left, all of it with considerably lower odds of success and higher odds of problems than she would’ve had in her younger years. And the weight doesn’t help any either.

Then let’s factor in the attitude. My sister is a 7 who could’ve been an 8 but in her head she’s a 13. The bitch shields are off the chart. Worst of all, she’s totally stuck on only the best of the best alpha males for her, and completely can’t understand that not a one of them would put up with her shit for the 15 minutes that a pump and dump would take.

She actually did almost marry one once. The story shouldn’t be much of a surprise to the Game community, although it took me years to learn some of the important details from my father. Hillary won’t talk about it to this day. She met the guy in college. When I was 14 I flew up to visit her over spring break and spent most of a week there. And I find out from her and her friends that she has a big time crush on this guy. Huge. The kind that turns women into beta males. Of course, he already had a girlfriend at the time, and evidently had had several during their time at school. They were freshmen. So in less than a year, this guy had had more than one semi-serious relationship. Alpha. And Hillary was dying, because he never noticed her.

Fast forward a couple of years and he’s driving down with her to visit the family because they’re engaged. I actually meet the guy for the first time I’m not impressed. He’s not that bright. He doesn’t particularly treat my sister well (which I now know is part of why she liked him). He’s not even that cool (the kind of trait you’d associate with an alpha male). And there was something about him that was just a bit… slimy. But something must’ve been working for him to get all the girls he did. A while later his parents came down to meet my parents. Them I actually liked OK, although they didn’t strike me as a family that had much in common with ours (I believed then and still believe that coming from similar family backgrounds is helpful for long term marriage stability).

About two months before the wedding the whole thing was called off. I had absolutely no idea why. Hillary wouldn’t talk about it. My parents pretended otherwise but they didn’t really seem to know either. The closest thing to an explanation I got at the time was that he was asking for more than my sister was willing to give up. I didn’t have any trouble accepting that explanation. It was always all about her. Over the years I tip toed around the subject and tried to pry more out of her, and about all I could get was that he was an asshole jerk and I should let it drop.

A couple of years ago my dad finally filled me in. I’m not sure he had known until shortly before that, either. Evidently the guy had wanted to set up some kind of open marriage where she’d follow him off to grad school, support him while he finished, and they could keep seeing other people. I admire his balls for trying to arrange such a thing. I admire my sister for telling him to go fuck himself. It’s one of the few smart decisions regarding men she’s ever made.

The pathetic part is how utterly easy my sister would be to Game if anybody put in the effort. She thinks she’s this amazingly strong, super brilliant, educated, modern, feminist, empowered woman who won’t put up with any shit from any man. And she wouldn’t – from any beta man. But a couple of nuclear negs to offset the 13 ego that comes from the ultimate life of gold stars and pats on the head, a healthy dose of “ignore her” game, and just not putting up with any of her shit and she’d be putty. If she read this blog she’d be the first one to leave the feminist rage comments about how I’m putting women down, women aren’t really like that, it’s all society, we’re misogynistic pigs, and none of it really works anyway. But it’d work hard core with her.

She’s also ignored all the beta boys her whole life. Like the nice gentleman down the street who was very bright, hard working, clean cut, and very nice. He took her to senior prom as “friends.” She should’ve married him. He’d have been a good catch. But of course not. Typical LJBF territory. She’d go on and on and on and on and ON (and still will) about how there are no good men out there who meet all the criteria she’d lay out. Always the same laundry list of characteristics that in reality will get you branded an LJBF. Nevermind that there were always dozens of those guys around that I could’ve pointed to.

Moving on… from a comment by The Duece in the first post I linked above:

The funny thing is, when they’re not being offended at a man pointing it out, women will gladly point out that they don’t know what they want themselves, though not in those exact words, and will attempt to spin their fickle nature as a strength. You ever heard Shania Twain’s “Any Man Of Mine?”

Again, absolutely true about my sister. The whole time I was in college she kept telling me how amazed she was that I knew what I wanted to do and didn’t struggle with it. The whole time since then she’s kept telling me how amazing it is that I always knew what I wanted to do. Nevermind that it’s total crap and that the only consistent plan I ever had was, “I don’t want to spend my whole life working for the man like my father did.” She herself was happy to talk about how she didn’t know what she wanted to do (neither did most of her friends). But if anybody had dared to mention it being a general female problem, she’d have gone apeshit.

Part of me is still angry at her for “teaching” me so much about what women want that turned out to be so horribly wrong. Angry that I can, justifiably, lay 80% of the blame for my youthful frustration with women squarely at her feet. But mostly I’m just sad for her. Sure, she’s got her fancy pants Ivy League graduate degree. She’s not rich, and never going to be. She’s not famous, and never going to be. She’s not going to leave a massive mark on society the way she’s always wanted to. She will have people who remember her when she’s gone… but only for a while. And then there will be no children to give her the only true immortality we only have. No grandchildren to keep her company in her old age. No husband to grow old with. Just a lot of tears and bitterness to enjoy alone with her dog (at least she won’t be the cat lady) while she grows old on government retirement subsidies (if she’s lucky enough for it to still be there).

This is the liberation and empowerment that feminism has brought. And odds are that she’ll swear until her last miserable breath that it was all worth it.

My Sister In Law is a Bitch

And I’m not just saying that because it showed up in my search refers. It’s true.

OK, I talk about my family enough on here and it’s probably starting to get confusing. So to help everybody keep score, it’s time to make up some names. I’m the second of four children. I have an older sister and two younger brothers. For the sake of argument, let’s call them, in order, Hillary, Leonidas (me), Chewbacca (how the hell is that not in the spell checker?) and Wilson. Chewie’s got his own issues, but his marriage isn’t [Editor: This was a typo.] a lot better off than Wilson’s, so we’ll leave him alone for the moment. And Hillary… good lord, where would we even start. So today it’s Wilson.

For those who have seen it, Wilson gets his pseudonym from the movie Sky High, in particular the character of “Ron Wilson: Bus Driver” played by Kevin Heffernan. My brother looks and acts just like him, only he’s a teacher instead of a bus driver because in the real world we have teachers unions.

OK, I’m picking on my brother a bit. I actually feel kind of bad for it. Let’s set the tone for the whole discussion right here. My wife, some of our old friends and I were sitting around one night two or three years ago discussing some of the douchetastic things Wilson and his wife had done when one of my friends just said, “The sad part is that we’re all sitting around here talking about Wilson as if he’d died.”

See, Wilson used to be kind of cool in his own weird and twisted little way. He was always a little dork who tried way too hard, but he really did have his own unique sense of style. Unique enough that if I described it here it would be a dead giveaway to anybody who knows me, so I can’t really give too much detail. It was weird, but it was silly. The important people thought it unique and interesting, the losers thought it contemptible and those people you have to just get along with because they run everything found it tolerable because, well, it was just too silly to really come down on him for.

His whole life he’s had a problem knowing when to shut his damn mouth, and it’s gotten him into a lot of trouble. But for most of those years he was a really good natured kid, just energetic and mischievous. Then he met Emo Bear, his future wife (the name is a riff on the Care Bears, and it fits).

First of all, Emo Bear was a rebound relationship. A high school rebound relationship. We’re already off to a bad start. Worse, I later found out from a mutual friend who went to school with him that she basically was laying in wait to ensnare him when the other chick dumped him – probably for the crime of being way too beta, which is what killed all of my high school relationships, too. On the other hand, she’s probably spent a good bit of time on the cock carousel since then, so it’s not a total loss (although she was much cuter than Emo Bear).

Emo Bear is the living definition of a Spoiled American Princess. First of all, her mother rules the home she grew up in. Her father is an extremely beta engineer who lets himself get walked all over. And Emo is their first child and only daughter. On her best days when she was still in her prime years (the late teens), she was a solid 6. Her ego thinks she’s a 15.

She didn’t really bother me at first because she puts on a decent outward appearance of just being shy rather than aloof. I’m shy, so I got that – or thought I did. The first thing that bothered me was that Hermione and I would try to set up double dates from time to time and they’d always flake on us. Then the one time they did show up, instead of seeing a slightly edgy comedy that we had originally discussed, we ended up going to see a kids movie. For her. OK, slightly annoying, but not too bad yet.

Then came the first family Thanksgiving she showed up for. For reasons that are too complicated to go into here, Hermione couldn’t make it and instead ended up stuck with her parents right smack in the middle of their excruciating divorce. Their Thanksgiving consisted of ham sandwiches. Our Thanksgiving consisted of watch Wilson and Emo Bear ignore the family all day because they were too busy making out in another room. Oh, and this was the first family event she’d bothered showing to as well. Despite being significantly younger and scared to death of meeting my family, Hermione had driven across four states with me to go to Chewie’s wedding. Emo was a no show, and without very good reason (a trend that has since grown).

She continued to ignore family events, but every event with her family was super amazingly special and they just had to go. This struck me as a bad sign. So not too long later, I pulled Wilson aside and basically said, “Hey dude. She’s totally not making any effort to involve herself with your family, but dragging you to everything for hers… I just don’t think this is a good sign. Just be really sure you know what you’re doing.”

Oh, she didn’t like that when word got back to her. I was trying to break them up, oh I’m so awful blah blah. Which isn’t really true. At the time, all I really meant was what I said: just be really sure.

But a lot more unfolded after that. I met with some people from their church to go see a movie at one point, and quickly vowed, “Never again.” Can we say C-U-L-T? There’s some behavior there straight out of the brainwashing handbooks. Separate the subject from any family and friends who aren’t a part of the church? Check. Denigrate any other source of information they might get? Check. Make sure that all of his new friends are from the church and properly indoctrinating him? Check. Ensure that all members know that they and only they are the truly saved and everyone else is damned? Check. Emo Bear and her family unconsciously (it had to be unconscious because none of them is bright enough to do it consciously) picked up on the same techniques and used them to isolate Wilson even more.

And they’re really not that bright. This is the girl who, after spending more than two years working toward an education degree (she later dropped it down to something else because that was too hard) of all things had to have Wilson quietly explain what a labor union was one afternoon while we had a political discussion at my parents’ house. And she probably really is the smart one out of her family. It’s pathetic.

The drama escalated over the years. They still barely showed up at family events, using the flimsiest of excuses to get out of them. But then my brother lost his job (before he was a teacher) because he took off of work to go to her great-grandmother’s (whom he had never met) funeral in another state despite being out of sick days. Um… no shit they fired your ass, bro. And damn my luck for just happening to be there the day you told Dad about it.

When Hermione and I got married, Emo Bear through a shit fit at our rehearsal dinner and stormed off. It wasn’t a very good storm off, though, because hardly anybody even noticed. I’m pretty sure she was pissed off that we were getting married before her. They’d had to postpone their wedding three times because Wilson couldn’t get a job. The two of them tried to leave our reception early to go to a “going away” party for their minister. A man who was being forced out of the church because his wife committed suicide after she found out he was having an affair. Oh, and then he showed up at the church within weeks with his mistress.

She set her own final wedding date on Wilson’s birthday. He just went along with it with that dopey grin he’s always had, not realizing (or just tolerating, I’ve never really been sure) that she’d taken away the only day he had that was really his and made it all about her. She was a total bridezilla at her wedding. Most of my extended family didn’t show, mostly because the two of them had made so little effort for family events. Oh, and because none of them like her, either. But it’s better that they weren’t there. She and her family were jaw droppingly rude to my own family the whole weekend.

My parents have noticed all of this as well. They have the admirable habit of going to ridiculous lengths not to say anything negative about anybody (and I mean ridiculous; they take it too far). Even so, it slips out with her on occasion. But they never had the balls to tell either Wilson or Emo to their faces that their behavior is unacceptable. Instead, they just get pissy and take it all out on their other children. As far as I know, I’m the only family member who’s ever had the balls to say anything directly.

Which has led to the other problem. In her eyes, I’m the alpha. There’s never been anything direct, but I’m damned sure that it’s causing issues. My brother’s got his head so far up her ass that he won’t listen to or think anything she doesn’t approve of. He caves on everything. Beta to the core. So beta that I’d call him an Omega if he hadn’t somehow managed to father a child by her. And here I come, the only one in the family who won’t put up with her shit. You can guess the effect that has.

But dammit, I don’t want it. For one, it’s my brother. I would never go there. For another… ew, just ew. Remember when I said that at her best she was a solid 6? That was a few years ago. Now she’s a little rolly polly with a body that looks like a Chinese dumpling. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick, even with 10 condoms on. But it’s launched some sort of female competitive instinct that’s caused her to be all kinds of annoying to my wife. Great, just great. But I’m still sure as hell not going to back down and start acting like a chump.

You might think that because she’s so fundamentalist in her religion that their marriage would still have a decent chance of working out. I doubt it, though. Her family doesn’t like him and never has. She has no respect for him. And why should she? He caves to everything that she wants. He’s a school teacher in a time when schools are laying off teachers. We know that the school district he works for is about to announce layoffs. It’s been in all the papers. Yet rather than waiting until the announcements, they’re about to buy a house. Rather, I should say that he’s about to buy her a house, because I’ve got money that their marriage doesn’t last a decade. If he does get the pink slip there’s a decent chance it won’t last the summer. Sure, she’d have a pretty hard time trading up. But her family’s there ready to step in and convince her that just about anything would be a step up.

The worst part of all is the way they talk baby talk to each other even when other people are around. I heard it for the first time a few years ago when he was talking to her on the phone. Among my friends it has now been dubbed as his “gay man voice” because that’s exactly what it sounds like. Which is one reason why I roared with laughter when I read the following on the Château this morning:

Any man using baby talk with his woman should lop — or rather, daintily snip — his balls off and mail them to a scientific lab to be studied under an electron microscope for possible application in nanotechnology.

Amusingly and sadly all at once, that is my brother.

I want to help my little brother, but he won’t listen to anything I say on this topic. Indeed, he ignores almost any direct advice I give him now. I’m certain it’s because he wants to spare himself the fight with his wife over it. But it’s a little sad, because he still kind of hero worships me (his big brother) and picks up indirectly on the things I say and do. So for now I just wait on the sidelines, ready to hand him a copy of Athol’s new book when it comes out and point him over to Roissy.

I’m waiting for the explosion to come now that I’ve stopped putting up with her shit. I’m waiting for my father to tell me that it’s not my place to be treating them that way. I’m not looking forward to explaining that no, it’s his place to do it and he’s falling down on the job. But it needs to be done. What I’ve listed here is only a brief summary of the major items that I remember. She’s been at this for years now, and the tally is huge.

The really sad part is that after learning about Game it’s become so obvious that she’s desperate for a little bit of alpha treatment. She wants to be put in her place really, really badly. If my brother would just grow a pair, she wouldn’t be anywhere near as intolerable (she still wouldn’t have been worth marrying). But I just don’t see it happening until the cold hard reality of divorce court bites him on the ass. You can’t save everybody.

One Year Anniversary

It’s hard to believe that it’s been an entire year since I launched this blog. And oh what a year it’s been.

I’ve moved twice, changed jobs, transferred to a new grad school, almost finished my conversion to Catholicism, sold a car, and bought a car. We celebrated my son’s first birthday and my grandmother’s 90th. My nephew was born. Athol’s about to release his book. Keoni’s lived through his second tsunami. Ferdinand relaunched his blog as a group effort, which I joined, and I’ve launched a new satellite blog as part of his revamp.

The blog itself has grown. It started as merely a documentation of my path. It’s grown to be much more. I’m not exactly sure yet what it is, but it’s definitely more than that.

And oh yeah, I’m having more sex than ever.

Shit Test ACED

I really wish I liked country music. I like the homier, more down to earth feel of the Nashville crowd. I like that it’s a lot more family friendly. I like the values. I like the image. Even if the image is just as fake as the Hollywood image, I still like it better. I just have very little taste for the musical style. I’m a hard rock/metal guy myself. Still, this song is the perfect example of acing a shit test.

Via Raise Your Glass.

My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism – Conclusion and Summary

I haven’t really talked to my parents much about my conversion, but we had recently let them know that I will be baptized on Easter Sunday. My mother called me last Saturday and asked me why I’d picked the church we did. I told her it was a long answer. I’d have pointed her at this blog, except that I’ve made too many disparaging comments about my family here (one of the biggest reasons I post anonymously). I should’ve just told her that there was no way in hell I’d be caught dead at my brother’s church. It’s not really an explanation, but at least it’s true.

I was raised as a Methodist and found it to be nearly useless. Likewise, I found atheism and agnosticism to be unsatisfying.

I’ve come to believe over time that more defined religion is generally beneficial.

I believe Christianity to be both the most advanced and most beneficial major religion in the world today.

I have a lot of issues with some flavors of Christianity.

The Catholic church doesn’t suffer from most of these issues.

The Catholic church has other aspects that I see as good both for myself and for society.

I do still have issues with the church, and probably always will.

Nevertheless, I find it to be the best place to raise my children and strengthen my family against the storm of the modern world.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, in no way is this series an attempt to convert anybody. I’m not out to change anybody’s mind or win anybody’s approval. It is merely my story. Read it or don’t. Like it or don’t. Agree with it or don’t. Argue with it or don’t (I actually like those who do; reasoned argument is how I learn new things). It should be pretty clear by now that my conversion to Catholicism is largely for practical rather than theological reasons. Do I have huge amazing reservoirs of faith? No. I have issues with a lot of things. The Catholic God, though, will forgive me for that, even if He doesn’t approve. It is His nature.

The Whole Series

My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 1
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 2
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 3
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 4
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 5
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 6
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism Part 7
My Long and Winding Road to Catholicism – Conclusion and Summary