Don't be a bully

I was having a snack in the break room at work this week when my friend, Frank, sat at my table. He had a worried look on his face, so I asked him what was up. He proceeded to tell me a story about a girl he’s known since high school, Yvette. (I should note here that while this is a true story, all identifying information has been changed.) Frank was worried about her because even though she’s been married for more than 20 years, he saw her profile on a dating website. 

“Are you sure it was her?” I asked. He was. He said he had lunch with her a few days ago and she admitted it. She said that she no longer had any feelings for her husband, Jim, and hadn’t for quite some time. But she was determined to stay married to him, in part because of her religious upbringing.  She also thought it was important for her kids to have two parents at home, at least until the youngest graduated from high school, and that was a few years away.

Yvette told Frank that she’d been sleeping on the couch for the last five years. She didn’t want to blow up her marriage but she felt the need to be touched, and was looking for someone with whom she could have a discreet affair. 

Sensing the opportunity for a Red Pill lesson, I asked Frank to tell me about the husband. He took out his phone and pulled up Jim’s Facebook profile. The picture was worse than I expected. I saw a morbidly obese man, wearing a casual short-sleeve shirt and blue jeans. The shirt was a size too small, the buttons obviously straining to hold it closed, and his belly hung several inches over his belt. His hair looked like he had tried to cut it himself.  He had thick brushy hair growing out of his ears. 

My red-pill savvy readers have probably already jumped to the same conclusion that I did. “I bet he’s always trying to please his wife, let’s her run everything, and does whatever she says.” Frank quickly disabused me of that notion. “No, he’s quite the opposite. Everything has to be done exactly his way. When it’s not, he blows up. When they go out, if she makes eye contact with a man he accuses her of wanting to have sex with him. She has a very successful career and makes more money than he does, but he’s always telling her that she’s stupid and can’t do anything right.”

I had to mull this over for a while. The picture looked like an average Beta chump. But he didn’t exhibit the puppy-dog people-pleasing Beta behavior profile. Was this a case of excess Alpha, proving Athol’s point about needing a balance of Alpha and Beta for a successful long-term relationship?

But no, it’s not Alpha to seriously try to tear someone else down.  Jim is, as I had guessed from the picture, low Beta.  But rather than being the meek people-pleaser, Jim had taken the opposite tack: he’s a bully. 

At first glance, a bully may appear to have some Alpha traits. But what he actually has are badly overblown caricatures of Alpha traits. And while a true Alpha comes from a place of supreme inner confidence, the bully is the opposite.  The bully is motivated primarily by fear, and a complete lack of confidence.

Consider Jim’s behavior when he takes Yvette out in public. If she smiles at the waiter and engages in friendly conversation, Jim gets angry. He accuses her of wanting to have sex with the waiter.  This, my friends, is not the behavior of an Alpha male. A real Alpha male would just smile, knowing that the waiter was admiring the beauty of his woman, and confident that the waiter was not an actual threat.

And of course, an Alpha male would not allow himself to become morbidly obese. He’d hit the gym, find a good hair stylist, and get his ears waxed. He would either enjoy the fruits of his high-earning wife’s labor, or he’d improve himself until he could out-earn her. But a real Alpha would never belittle her accomplishments in an attempt to feel better about himself.

I imagine that twenty years ago, Jim might have been more Alpha. He did, after all, manage to marry a woman who bore him children and was apparently faithful for many years. But somewhere along the way, he quit. He let his health and his appearance deteriorate, he gave up on advancing his career. He either lost, or never had, those good Beta traits that build comfort and trust in a long-term relationship. And he certainly lost whatever  Alpha traits attracted his wife in the first place. 

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be a bully.

More Housework, Less Sex

Once again, science has confirmed what the manosphere already knows.

The Drudge Report today links to a story titled “More housework, less sex for married men.” The basic premise is that men who do too many of the traditionally female chores have less sex than men who do more masculine tasks.

"Our findings suggest the importance of socialized gender roles for sexual frequency in heterosexual marriage," said lead author Sabino Kornrich, of the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t help out around the house. Ian Ironwood has mentioned in his blog that he does nearly all the cooking at his house, because he’s better at it. Frame is everything. Ian cooks because Ian decided to cook. He took charge of the kitchen and uses it to show off his skills. He’s cooking because he has decided that’s what works best, not because his wife wants him to do it. He’s the Captain of his kitchen, not his wife’s kitchen bitch.

Balance is important in Married Game. Beta isn’t a bad thing, but it must be balanced by Alpha. Washing the dishes is beta… which doesn’t mean you should never do it. But as a general rule, it’s manly to take out the garbage, to do maintenance on the family home and vehicles. Make sure those demonstrations of Alphadom get taken care of first. And when you do decide to help with the less-manly chores, do it in a manly way. Don’t get nagged and fitness-tested into doing things. Keep your alpha frame. Do the chores that you want to do, on your own terms.

It's just a kid's song... or is it?

Once you take the Red Pill, you begin to see wisdom in unlikely places. Consider, for example, this simple children’s song:

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

Life is but a dream.

Now look at it from a Red Pill viewpoint:

Row, row, row…

Nothing comes for free. You have to do the work. You aren’t going to get buff unless you go to the gym. You aren’t going to bang women unless you make approaches. It’s up to you to put in the effort.

…your boat,

Row your boat, not your neighbor’s boat. You have to focus on achieving your goals, taking care of your business. The only person you can change is yourself.

Gently down the stream.

Take it easy. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You have to do the work, but you don’t have to do it all today. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow instead of fighting against the current. You still have to row, you still have to steer, but you don’t have to fight your way upstream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

You see a lot of guys in the various forums who have received the Red Pill but are really pissed off about it. It’s understandable. Everything you were taught growing up is a lie, and it’s unsettling to have to learn a new reality. But once you’ve accepted the wisdom of the Red Pill, once you have changed yourself into the best man that you can possibly be, you should be having fun. Look at me: at age 55, I’m looking and feeling better than I ever have in my life. I’m having more sex (with my wife, of course) than I’ve ever had in my life. When I go out in public, women flirt with me. It’s a blast. If you aren’t having fun living your life, you aren’t doing it right.

Life is but a dream.

Whatever your religious/spiritual viewpoint, you’ll probably agree with this: our life on earth is but a fleeting shadow. Make the most of the time you have here, because it will be gone before you know it.

Alpha Tip: Switch Your Workouts

An important part of the MAP is getting physically fit.  For the past few months, I’ve been using the Stronglifts 5x5 program. It’s a great program, and it’s worked well for me.

Last weekend I was at a Barnes and Noble store with some time to kill. I remembered another blogger recommended the book “Starting Strength,” so I headed to the Health and Fitness section to look for it. They didn’t have it in the store, but they did have The New Rules of Lifting. It looked interesting, so I bought it.

Yesterday I did the first workout from the beginners section of The New Rules. On paper, this should have been much easier than the 5x5 workout I did the week before. It wasn’t. At the end of the workout my arms and legs felt like they were made of jelly. Today my abs are sore, especially at the top near my ribcage, an area that’s never felt sore before. This “easier” workout is using different muscles, and the same muscles in a different way, than my previous workout.

Here are a couple of basic rules for working out:

Do Something. Any workout is better than doing nothing. Buy a book, find a website, look at some YouTube videos. Pick a workout and get started.

Then Do Something Else. Don’t keep doing the same five or six exercises forever. Switch it up now and then. This not only has the physical benefit of stressing different muscles in different ways, it also has psychological benefits. The variety can keep you from getting bored, and that can motivate you to keep working out.

In addition to the workout plans mentioned above, here are a couple of others to consider:

Simplefit.org  This website has complete exercise plans based on bodyweight exercises. No gym memberships or expensive equipment is required.

Scooby’s Workshop Home workout plans using minimal equipment, mostly dumbbells. Good videos showing proper form for the exercises.

Alpha Move: Be Prepared

I’m kind of shocked at the number of people on Staten Island who are shocked that they aren’t getting any help, three days after Sandy hit them.

Maybe it’s because I grew up on the Gulf Coast, but I thought everyone knew certain basic facts about hurricanes and other natural disasters. One of those facts is that after every disaster, some people are surprised at how long it takes for help to arrive. This, in spite of the fact that it happens after EVERY disaster. You’d think people would figure it out.

As an Alpha male, or an Alpha in Training, YOU are the Captain of your family’s ship. That means the buck stops with you. Your family is looking to you to make sure they are safe, and you’d better do it because FEMA sure isn’t going to.

First, and I mean no disrespect to the people of Staten Island when I say this, if you live on an island, WHY ARE YOU STILL THERE during and after a hurricane? If your house is 10 feet above sea level, and the National Hurricane Center is predicting an 11 foot storm surge, the math isn’t that hard. The best way to survive a natural disaster is to not be there when it happens. West Coast residents have to deal with earthquakes, which give no warning before they hit. But everyone knew a hurricane was coming. They were warned that it was going to be bad. They had plenty of time to find somewhere else to be. And again, I’m not saying this to pick on these victims, just to point out that you shouldn’t make the same mistake.

I’m also amazed at the people who are running out of gasoline three days after the storm. That means they are either driving a lot, or they didn’t have the foresight to fill their tank the day before the storm. Look, storms knock out power. Sometimes it takes a while to get the power back on. You can’t pump gas with no electricity, so fill up ahead of the storm.

The other thing you should do is be prepared for whatever natural disasters affect your area. If you don’t live near the coast you may not have to worry about hurricanes. But winter storms can cause similar problems with widespread power outages, and inability to travel. Basic preparation is the same, whether you expect hurricanes, winter storms, or the Zombie Apocalypse.

There are certain basics that you just have to make sure you have on hand, all the time. They fall into a few basic categories:

WATER: My house has a well, so if the power is out, the water is out. Even in a city, if the power is out long enough the water will stop flowing. Water is bulky and heavy, so it’s not easy to store. But at a minimum you want a three-day supply of drinking water on hand. Figure a minimum of a gallon of water per person per day. Get a couple of those blue five-gallon water containers at Wal Mart and fill them up. Put a teaspoon of unscented chlorine bleach in each jug to kill any germs. Change it out every three months anyway.

That’s just for drinking. You’ll need water for flushing your toilet, too. One way to keep a good supply of non-potable water handy is to fill the bathtub before the power goes out.

FOOD: At a bare minimum, keep a two-week supply of non-perishable food in your house all the time. If your family eats canned and dried foods, this can be as simple as keeping stocked up on the stuff you normally eat. If you don’t eat processed foods, you might need to keep a survival kit of canned goods. Anything you buy at the supermarket needs to be rotated on a regular basis. Canned food doesn’t keep forever.

Make sure you have a way to cook this stuff after the power goes out. I come from a long line of campers, but if don’t already have a camp stove, get one.

This seems really obvious, but you’d be surprised: make sure you have a way to OPEN CANS without electricity!

For longer term storage there are better options. Do a web search on food storage, or ask a Mormon neighbor to help you out.

FUEL: Before a storm hits, fill the car with gas. I make it a general rule to never get below half a tank, but then, I’m paranoid. Make sure you have fuel for your camp stove. (Propane is the most convenient and probably the safest.) Have flashlights and extra batteries. If your house (like mine) is all-electric, figure out how you are going to keep warm in the winter. A fireplace or wood-burning stove can keep a room or two warm. There are propane camping heaters but they are meant for small tents. Kerosene heaters put out a lot of warmth but liquid fuel can be dangerous indoors. Whatever you use, keep adequate fuel available.

MISC: Paper towels, toilet paper, sanitary products, any medications you take on a regular basis.

DEFENSE: There always seems to be looting after a storm. Most of the time the looters are rummaging through empty homes and stores, but not always.  If you follow the minimal advice I’ve given above, you’ll be in better shape than 90% of your neighbors. What are you going to do if they decide to partake of some freelance socialism and redistribute your wealth? As Captain, you need to be prepared to repel boarders.

There are lots of opinions on this, and mine is far from authoritative. But this is my blog, so I’m going to tell you my opinion. And in my opinion, if you are only going to have one weapon for home defense, it should be a pump-action 12-guage shotgun. Better: in addition to the shotgun, have a rifle in the thirty-caliber neighborhood, and a handgun in a minimum of .38 caliber or 9mm. Both the rifle and shotgun should have short barrels. Tell the sporting goods store you are going to use them for hunting deer in heavily wooded areas, and you’ll get something appropriate.

Stay away from scary-looking black military-style weapons. You want something that could be used for sports like hunting or target shooting. The reason: if you should ever have to defend your family with one of these weapons, you will eventually be sitting in a courtroom while an assistant district attorney shows them to a jury. You want the jury to see you as someone who was driven by circumstances to pick up his hunting gun and defend himself, not as a vigilante survivalist who was chomping at the bit to kill someone.

That list should get you started, or at least get you thinking along the proper lines. Remember that after any significant natural disaster, it’s likely to be a minimum of three days before any kind of help arrives at all, and up to two weeks before the situation stabilizes and serious reconstruction starts.  

Homework assignment: For the next three days, take note of everything that you eat, drink, consume, or use. Ask yourself if you would miss it in the aftermath of a storm. If you would, make sure you have it on hand in your “hurricane kit.”