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I’m not going to touch on anything political; I’ve spoken many times here about my early days as a loudly and annoyingly vocal socialist, the way I damaged so many interpersonal relationships by letting politics supersede everything else, etc.
For me, especially at this particular juncture in my life, I spend a ton of time agonizing about just how badly I bungled my prime years by not managing to seal the deal on a long-term relationship. And it was absolutely not for lack of trying! I spent my entire teens and twenties desperately pining over a series of unrequited crushes. It’s just that I was doing the exact opposite of the things I should have been doing to actually give those overtures any chance of succeeding.
I bought hook-line-and-sinker into the alluring but false promise of certain romantic comedies - The Office being probably the biggest culprit - that the secret to getting a woman to fall in love with you is to become her very close friend first, orbit passively around her but putting yourself into scenarios wherein romance could blossom but which maintain plausible deniability if it doesn’t, and eventually she’ll give you a clear sign that she has fallen for you. This is all, of course, pretty much 180 degrees the opposite of what actually inspires attraction in the vast majority of girls and women. It is, however, very comforting to believe if you’re a gawky, profoundly insecure, sexually unconfident, low-T guy like I was (and in many ways still am) because it doesn’t require you to take bold action and risk catastrophic failure and embarrassment. (Except actually it still does lead eventually to embarrassment, because over time one must face the facts that a particular crush is going absolutely nowhere and she’s clearly drifting away from you, and you realize that the failure was just dragged out over time, losing you precious time and other opportunities.)
I did manage to have one relationship that was, for a relatively short period of time, seemingly very successful, with a very beautiful and intelligent woman, but again, my total lack of understanding of what women want out of a relationship with a man was so lacking that I couldn’t hold the relationship together. However, while I’ve at long last come to the painful realization that women are not seeking an egalitarian and companionate relationship with a man - a friendship that just happens to also involve sex and cohabitation - I also pretty much optimized my whole personality and lifestyle toward that.
I never developed many of the skills (practical or internal) that would be required of a genuine paterfamilias. I’m too redpilled on women and too unable to play along with the female style of unfocused political venting to have much chance of a successful relationship with the kind of progressive woman who might actually be interested in a companionate relationship with a somewhat-effeminate underemployed head-in-the-clouds armchair intellectual; I’m also nowhere near what conservative “trad” women are, understandably, looking for.
@FiveHourMarathon is right about aging. I seem to have hit a real wall physically during the COVID lockdowns, losing a substantial amount of physical fitness that I’m now struggling to get back. (And some of my old crushes are starting to hit their own walls as well, such that even the ones who are still single are not nearly as appealing to me as they once were.)
Young guys, please do not waste your prime. It closes sooner than you think, and the dating scene once you’re out of it is, if not quite a wasteland, at least wasteland-adjacent. Find a good woman early and lock her down for life before she has a chance to experience all the guys she’s missing out on.
While this is the correct way to play the game of hearts* for 80% of men, there is an alternative. There is only one alternative and it is high risk. You're betting the house on it.
You can use your 20s and early 30s to build a company or two or three and then have the financial support from your mid 30s on to date out of your league. If you don't have to work full time and have the discipline to stay in shape, the deterioration from 35 - 50 is negligible and with money and reasonable social proof (you can't be a shut in) you can date women that were not accessible to you in your 20s.
Two caveats:
2.This is not a guaranteed road to meaning and satisfaction with life. I've seen it up close, and the playboy lifestyle just isn't real. What this life gives you is options and an extended vitality window in which to consider those options. It is still on you to make decisions that align with a deeper philosophy of life.
As I said at the top, this shouldn't be attempted by, well, anyone from an EV perspective. It's living in deep risk. I think it deserves discussion, however, because this is how society actually moves forward - extremely outliers with outsized return generated by high levels of risk taking.
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I loved your post and agree with your advice. But as a guy who had a sort-of-similar trajectory, this still sounds totally fixable! I know you said you're struggling with physical health, and I haven't used testosterone myself, but is there a reason you're not trying to simply become literally high-T?
My wife is the picture of ostensible progressivism, and it certainly causes tension, but it's not fatal. I always thought the red-pill message was that politics aren't usually dealbreakers even if they're stated to be - you can simply change the subject, agree and amplify, or simply be a compelling enough package that she'll find ways to make it work from her end. I know it's easier said than done, but it sounds like you have the basic ingredients at hand!
I’ve considered this, but I’m really wary of the potential side effects, and of just being unprepared to deal with the likely changes to my personality. My vague sense is that testosterone supplements are only useful if you are totally committed to being very serious about working out, and the reality is that my lifestyle (I have a side gig several nights a week, hobbies that sometimes prevent me from going to the gym, etc) does not permit me to be as single-minded about exercise as I was for about a year and a half prior to COVID. I’d also be worried that my body would become dependent on the supplements and become unable to reliably regulate its own hormonal levels. (And I’m worried about losing my hair.)
I don't know much about it, but my understanding is the opposite - that hormones + no exercise is much better for putting on mass than no hormones and lots of exercise. At least, I saw a study to that effect one time, and it's certainly the case that male teenagers put on muscle much faster than even relatively athletic females. But please don't take my word for it.
I remember that one! The study was anabolic steroids rather than hormones, but the roided couch potatoes really did gain more muscle than the natty lifters.
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My girlfriend is more progressive than me, but not by too much -- except for her feelings on Trump, she's a lot more like the average Republican than the average Democrat. She sends me random texts about immigration and gender transition.
But she was a lot more progressive when I met her: what happened is we got together, started talking about things, and respected each other enough that we started moving towards each other. I became more opposed to COVID restrictions, she became more opposed to immigration, I became more sympathetic to abortion moderates, she became more sympathetic to evangelicals. I guess at this point she respects me enough that I can make an argument for just about anything and she'll either start nodding her head and say it makes sense or she'll say something like "I don't agree but I see where you're coming from, I see how your views come from a place of trying to do what's right for everyone," which is a wild thing to hear after you've argued against a central pillar of contemporary feminism.
So I don't get the dichotomy between "progressive woman who can only engage in two minutes hate while loving a somewhat-effeminate guy" or "tradwife who won't respect you if you aren't a blue collar strongman indifferent to physical pain." I guess I got lucky and met "mildly traditional woman from rural America who likes discussing ideas" and I consider myself to have gotten the best of both worlds.
Yes, sounds like we are on the same page, and OP is psyching himself out.
I said my wife is "ostensibly progressive" because she has a conservative personality, she just happens to have been raised and schooled in a progressive, feminist echo chamber. (Today's beloved conservative position is often yesteryear's progressive overreach). She just can't bear to be against the consensus, and I think instinctively knows that arguing with me is likely to move her away from the consensus, so literally can't discuss politics for more than 2 minutes without getting too upset to weigh arguments. I find this frustrating and sad, and she talks as if it's devastating to her to be with someone who has the wrong opinions, but it doesn't actually come up unless one of us brings it up.
I actually think it's reasonable for her to refuse to argue issues on their merits with me, because I'm just a much better arguer than her. She's right to fear that I could argue convincingly for just about any position, right or wrong. For this reason I've told her that it's fine for her to disagree with me on anything without being able to articulate why, especially when it comes to joint decision-making.
My girlfriend is actually the opposite -- raised by libertarians who rage about government corruption, she can't bear to be in favor of the consensus. She watches documentaries about government scandals, and has her own theories on historical scandals, like "Bush did JFK." She can't talk about politics without trying to dissect what's going on, and listens to political podcasts. Frankly I think it'd be devastating to her if I had normal opinions. I start railing against the government and she gives me puppy dog eyes.
That being said, she's more "normal" than this description makes her seem. If you met her, you'd probably think of her as just another politically disengaged young woman in jeans and a floral blouse. She says her coworkers watch their language around her, because "she's so sweet and pure"... oh, if they knew...
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