The Rupture of the Marriage Market Place

The chasm between the sexes runs ever deeper.

Readership: All
Author’s Note: This post is based on a conversation between Deti and Novaseeker and has been coauthored with Jack.
Reader’s Note: The theme for July is “Market Forces”.
Length: 3,600 words
Reading Time: 12 minutes

ALPHA F*X, BETA BUX, REDUX

Red Pill Boomer wrote,

“What do you guys think, has the AF/BB strategy really been superseded now by AF and Fs and Fs M’ lady from ages 18-27, and then her mindset shifts to, “Now that I’m 28 years old… COMMIT d@mn you! I won’t ‘settle’ for anything less than you Mr. Top 5-10-20% man. I’m entitled to one of you!” Are we going to see the trend of ‘Alpha Widows’ escalating in the next few years?  Btw, this seemed to be a subtext in the Tomi Lahren rant that went viral last summer, the “PSA for Boyish” men diatribe. She seemed to really be throwing a tantrum about this very thing; and coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, she was just turning 28 years old at the time of the rant.

This has been the case for some time, actually.

AF/BB is an issue of sequencing. Some Manospherian authors have called it a longitudinal “mating strategy”, but I don’t believe the vast majority of women are that self-aware. What we see is that women are moulded by the herd, focused on the Feeelz, running on auto-pilot (Jack’s phrase), eating up male-sourced opportunities as they come, and are totally oblivious to what they are doing. I do believe there are some “masterminds” who have shaped this kind of life path into a mating strategy, and up until the last decade or so (until Red Pill went mainstream and MGTOW gained momentum), this strategy was quite effective.

That is, women start off with Alpha F*x (AF), with the idea of trying to get the most suitable of the AFs to commit to them. That is the goal. They do F some unmarriageable bad boy AFs, too, but sooner or later they get jaded from the brutality of sexual competition in this Sexual Market Place (SMP), and then gravitate towards men that, perhaps with a few adjustments (on his part, in the woman’s mind) would be a good potential long term partner, and try to get him to commit. In other words, she begins looking for the Alpha-Bux (AB) and tries to secure his commitment. This is pretty much always the first sequential strategy women employ that they are cognitively aware of. But actually, this is an even longer bet than a simple AF. The thing that makes this strategy even more difficult for them is that they have already calibrated their sexual expectations on their initial AF experiences.

Almost all of them realize at some stage that getting commitment from an AB is not going to happen for them. Either because they can’t find an actual AB in their local market, or because the ABs they did find are not interested in committing — often to anyone, but sometimes only to them. Part of this is because these high value AB men see these women as already used and broken, and another part is because these women never learned how to get along with a man from their past life experiences.

The age at which women realize this, however, varies greatly. It varies by geography (women tend to hunt for ABs much longer in big blue metro areas than in smaller dating markets), and has changed over time (the age of marriage is increasing over time). Right now in places like Manhattan and DC that age is mid-30s. In someplace like Omaha or Pittsburgh it’s more like 26-27. There’s a lot of variation. The SMP is local, and also varies by social class somewhat — so people tend to put a lot of stock in the universality of what they see in their own locality, because that is their local reality, but overall there is quite a lot of local variance behind the national stats.

But at some point, the female mating strategy goes through another revision. Most women transition from hunting for the AB to compromising (AKA “settling”), and hunting for the best Beta Bux (BB) they can get. That is the “epiphany” that Rollo Tomassi refers to, or what is often called “lane changing”, where women consciously shift their aim from mostly chasing the elusive AB’s commitment, to trying to find the best BB they can get. Again, the age at which this shift happens varies, and overall is increasing, such that in, say, Manhattan, this isn’t happening now until the mid-30s. But it does happen for most women.

Some women never make the shift. Either they are one of the few who marries an AB (some of the female personages in the sphere are like this), or they are of the “never settle” mindset that is so conditioned by riding the endless train of alphas in their 20s and earlier 30s that they can’t bring themselves to settle for a beta, greater or not (Kate Bolick is one example of this). Some of these women write articles in The Atlantic and Medium. Some of them go for “The Lesbian Option”. Some of them just go for longer term singleness, finding other holdout single women “never settle” types to brunch with and travel to exotic places with, and write travel or food blogs with and so on (viz. the “Sisterhood is Powerful!!!  Natch!!!!” type of thing).

But outside of those outliers most women do change lanes eventually because most women do marry still, and almost all of them are not marrying ABs because ABs are very few in number. Most do make the shift and settle, but the age at which they are doing that has been getting pushed back, and, on the margins, over time more women are being left out when the music stops because they find there is a shortage of age appropriate marriageable men when they do finally decide to lane change. That’s a real thing, it’s happening, but like truly sexless men, while it is a thing and is increasing, it’s still marginal — most men are not completely sexless (just less sex and less quality than they would like) and most women are not going without marriage (just later and to a less attractive man than they would like). The marginal changes are, however, real and growing over time.

The Rupture of the MMP

As I described above, most women leverage their sexual value in their peak years to avail of AF sex with hot fun sexy men when young, simply because they can.  There’s nothing stopping them, and we’re going into a third generation (!!!) of women who live their sexual lives this way. However, there are some major “problems” with this strategy from the womens’ perspective.

1. There are fewer attractive men than there are attractive women. This is because of the differing ways men and women view attraction – most women are attractive to most men, but most men are NOT attractive to most women.
2. There’s a hard limit on how much most men can improve their attractiveness. A guy who started out as a 4, 5, or 6 is never going to be an 8 or a 9. That just is not going to happen, ever! So this hard limit on the pool of “eligible” men is not going to change, ever!
3. The relative scarcity of high SMV men combined with the attrition of men from the SMP/MMP due to the growing MGTOW movement causes women to be hugely alarmed and concerned over MGTOW. I will cover this in a follow up post. &

These problems are really insoluble, and the current SMP and MMP has no workable solution to this problem.

The prior solution and bulwark against this problem was a combination of the following.

1. Restricting and constraining women’s sexual and dating behavior to keep them realistic and prevent them from developing a taste for sexual attention from men who would never marry them because those men have better options.
2. Getting young women paired off relatively early to SMP-comparable men around their age or a little older.
3. Getting those married women pregnant and keeping them busy with homes and kids and sometimes jobs to supplement the family income, so they have no time to think about “bigger better deals” or lament “the one that got away”.
4. If all else fails, and Bertha or Plain Jane can’t get the job done, well, we’ll just help things along and do some matchmaking for them. We’ll set Bertha up with Poindexter (and they’ll be OK); and we’ll set Jane up with Ernie Engineer (and they’ll be OK).

We know this approach has worked, presumably for centuries.

If Bertha and Jane never got to even talk to Quentin Quarterback, much less get a one night stand with him, then they’ll be just fine with their lower status guys like Poindexter and Ernie. They won’t be pining away for Quentin because they don’t even really know what he’s like. Susie’s busy at home with Paul Plumber and their 4 kids and her part time accounting job. Stacy got Quentin and is having his kids and going to the country club. Our intrepid girls, all wives now, have too much on their plates to give a lot of thought to what some guy they’re not married to or living with is doing… simply because they never had anything to do with any other guys.

We don’t have any of this now. We don’t have any solutions to this problem now. Because our society did not want that solution anymore. Our society wanted women to be sexually liberated, so they can have sex with whomever they wanted. So if women can have sex with whomever they want, they ignore everyone but Quentin and Chad. And after some fun with Quentin and Chad, they bristle at the notion that, if they want marriage (and most all women do at some point), they have to spend the rest of their lives with men like Paul Plumber, or Ernie Engineer, or Stan Stemlord, or Tom Teacher, or Bob from Accounting, or Billy Beta, or, God forbid, Poindexter.

So women have a very, very hard time accepting that they can’t get commitment from Quentin and Chad. After all, they got to sleep with Quentin and Chad, so why can’t they get commitment from one of those guys?

The Mismatch

There are several reasons for this dilemma, but the main reason is that women’s experience and criteria are the reverse of men’s. That is…

• Men face an uphill battle trying to match women’s expectations (which are intentionally clouded in confusion) and also compete against other men for sexual access to women.
• Women can pretty much have sex with whomever they choose.
• Men have lower criteria for sex and higher criteria for marriage.
• Women are the reverse — sky high criteria for sex, lower criteria for relationships/marriage.

Because of the dictates of supply and demand, it turns out that…

• Women are willing to have sex with high quality men who would never marry them, while at the same time (simultaneously in some cases), they are willing to marry men who don’t match their sexual criteria. Men resent the ħәll out of this. They feel very little loyalty to such a woman and they are tempted to step out, even after marriage.
• Women are often deemed worthy of sex by men, but very few women are attractive enough (judging by a panoply of factors) to gain a commitment from one of those guys. Women resent the ħәll out of that. They transfer that resentment to the men they eventually marry, which dampens his once vibrant love for her, and later in life, these women become bitter shrews. Women will vehemently refuse to face up to this truth.

Men’s Perspectives

From a man’s perspective, it doesn’t make sense that a woman would be willing to marry a man she doesn’t want to have sex with, because this is a recipe for lifelong angst and frustration. Too many men fail to discover this until after marriage.

Desperate men are willing to wife up once-sexy, unmarriageable women, of course, but in fact, they would prefer to have sex with those beautiful women during their prime years. But those women, who in past generations were largely available for marriage, are instead now choosing to ride Alphas into the sunset of oblivion. A man’s desire for sex with beautiful women never really goes away. So if a man doesn’t quench this thirst when he’s younger, he’s likely to be looking around for opportunities to do so when he is older. (Women see this as a bug, not a feature.)

So to men, the idea that a woman would be willing to marry a man, but not find him attractive enough to enthusiastically make love to him on a regular basis, is exactly backwards from the way most men experience life, and it’s also precisely the opposite from women. Worst of all, men are left completely in the dark when women act directly opposite to how men would expect them to act in a way that is entirely reasonable when looking at life as a whole.

Women’s Perspectives

From a woman’s perspective, it doesn’t compute that a woman would be attractive enough for sex, but not for marriage, generally speaking, because this fails to integrate their desire for Alpha seed with their need for provisioning.

Women will have sex with some sexy, unmarriageable men, of course, but in fact, they would like to marry many of the men they are “riding” during their party years — if not him, and not then, someone like him, and eventually. But those men, who in past generations were largely available for marriage, are instead now choosing to spin as many plates as they can while the oven is hot. A woman’s desire for marriage is non-negotiable. So if a woman can’t lock down Chad or Quentin when she’s younger, then she’s quite willing to settle for Bert or Ernie when she is older. (Men see this as a bug, not a feature.)

So to women, the idea that these guys would be willing to have sex with them super-fast, but that they would also find themselves not attractive enough to marry is exactly backwards from the way most women feel things, viscerally, and it’s precisely the opposite from men. Women are blindsided when men act directly opposite to how they would expect men to act by projecting their own way of looking at things onto men.

WHAT WE HAVE NOW

As you can see, men’s and women’s perspectives are diametric opposites. This is because men’s and women’s respective needs are locked in a mortal battle against their desires leading to a bifurcation of the entities of sex and marriage.

In general, women are prioritizing personal and sexual fulfillment, while keeping a long term goal of marriage on the back burner until their last egg nears its expiration date. Sex is not satisfying to women unless she can get a top 10% man, so this creates a mating glut centered around hot men with soft harems — the same men who will never commit to a fugacious marriage as long as voracious thatch is on tap. For those precious few men who have teems of bush spilling off the edge of their mattress, the real opportunity to marry is available to them, but it pales in comparison to the plush piles of poon on the pillow.

Since women are preoccupied with their sexual freedom and fail to prioritize marriage, the emerging result is that marriage is being pushed further and farther out, and some are not marrying at all. If anything, women’s demands for attractive men are being pushed up – male physical appearances and looks are much more important now, and that makes the problem worse, because most men just do not meet that one physical ideal women like. Most men just don’t have those characteristics and never will, no matter what they do.

What we are living through now, as Roger Devlin pointed out in his seminal works of the noughts-era, is the rejection wholesale by women of the “old deal”, which they chafed under and didn’t see as equitable. Instead they pushed for a “having my cake and eat it, too” solution of being free to pursue sexy men for sex without consequences (biological or social), followed by marriage to a suitably attractive, dutiful husband, coupled with exit options on fair terms at her choice, at any time. It was basically a “we win, you lose” zero sum game scenario. They thought (and they really honestly did think), that men would “play along” because … sex. The thinking was, “We have the power of the p*ssy. Men have no choice, they have to do what we want, otherwise they won’t get laid at all, so don’t worry about the men.” And that worked, for the most part, for most of the past 60 years. It still does work, to a large degree, but we are seeing erosion on the margins over time, as more and more men find it doesn’t pencil for them to play the game, and as more and more women get greedier and greedier about making it even more of a zero-sum “we win, you lose” game.

Most recently, many women of the younger set are starting to wake up to this reality, and are making some adjustments in their expectations and their life strategies. For women, OnlyFans is one aspect of this, and MGTOW for men. There are many others. Overall, intersexual relations are becoming more isolated and transactional in nature. As long as the younger set are focused on the flesh, this will continue to unravel until a breaking point as been reached.

THE QUICK FIXES

NovaSeeker gave us a framework of options. But after looking them over, it’s evident that there isn’t really a solution that comes to mind that would not involve unwinding the social changes of the last 60 years. The only current “solutions” for men are…

1. Do without and spend the rest of your life single. This is what increasingly more men are doing.
2. Wait a long time and compromise/settle so deeply that it’s a net loss and worse than what you might have had with doing without (what a sizable number of men and women do).

Door Number 1 is hard for men because they spend years without sex. Men will do nearly anything for a piece of @$$.  They will abase and embarrass themselves for sex. They will turn themselves into the worst kinds of simps. If they have to wait or pay for it, they will. If they have to beclown themselves, they will. If they have to learn pickup or game, they will. If they have to become good at complex algebra, they will. This is why men will have sex with women they don’t really love, who they’re really not all that into, who they consider beneath them.

Door Number 1 is hard for women because being a “never married” is a huge status hit with the feminine social matrix. Women need marriage/commitment like men need sex. They just have to have it and they’ll do almost anything to get it. (I never realized this until coming to the ‘sphere – for most women, being a “never married” is one of the most humiliating and emotionally traumatic things a woman can experience. This, in addition to the biological clock, is why women go into full panic mode in their 30s.) This is why women will marry men they’re really not all that into, marry men beneath them, marry men they don’t love.

So, lots of people will pick Door Number 2.

While it is true that men hold the key to marriage, the grand majority of men cannot find a woman worth taking who will have him. Even for those men who marry, marriage is not joyful to them without the component of hot sex with a beautiful, loyal, submissive wife.

The point is that under the present SMP/MMP regime, the problem of a shortage of attractive men cannot be solved for most people. There’s no way to solve it short of more and more people simply doing without, and women will not dare to sweep the crusty cobwebs off that option, which forces many men to take said option.

Conclusions

In religious words, we could say that it’s not God’s will for most people to remain celibate. But on the other hand, it’s not God’s will for anyone to enter into a debased relationship, which is what they are doing when they marry or have sex with someone simply so that they can avoid the suffering inherent in choice (1).

The “sweet spot” socially is to find a way to match up what the sexes bring to each other and seek from each other in an equitable way.

That’s what used to be done, but now, no more. That just can’t be done anymore, because most men can’t give women what they demand. It really is “heads I win, tails you lose”. The only way men can win is just to say, “I just won’t play, then. I’ll just keep my money and resources and commitment. Or, if I get hard up enough, I’ll get an escort, a sugar baby or an OnlyFans subscription, and toss a little cash your way. Otherwise, step off.”

On a societal-wide scale, this is one of the biggest conundrums of today’s MMP. But on an individual basis, there is a sweet spot that is lying right under our noses, yet, it is difficult to sniff it out.

References

• thedeti 2021-01-14 at 8:21 am
• thedeti 2021-01-14 at 9:02 am
• Novaseeker 2021-01-14 at 9:47 am
• thedeti 2021-01-14 at 10:09 am
• Novaseeker 2021-01-14 at 6:04 pm

Related

• Dalrock: Feminism would work if we didn’t have weak men screwing everything up. (2013 October 17)
• The Rational Male: Plan B (2016 March 14)
• Σ Frame: Hopelessness (2020 April 6)
• Σ Frame: Handling an IOI requires a Miracle! (2020 July 17)
• Σ Frame (Novaseeker): The Lopsided Liberalized Mating Market (2021-02-17)