The outline of my post: the modern man is fucked. This is perspective coming from someone who easily sleeps with lots of women in one of the "harshest" North American cities, where lots of pick up artists had their start. If I have trouble maintaining a relationship past 2 years, I don't know how the FUCK most men are hoping to do so. There are so many systemic challenges in Western society to stable and lasting relationships. I hope to share some useful insights, depressing findings, maybe an interesting story, and share some ideas for moving forwards as men.

First of all, a brief pre-amble. I joined TRP on Reddit almost 4 years ago on the same username. I had some decent initial success with women as a young-mid 20s guy, and hopefully even in my immaturity made some decent posts on the sub. Well things really picked up for me and I didn't have time to visit the manosphere anymore. You see, I was getting laid. A lot. I've spend over 6 years of my late 20s in long term relationships, and yet I've stilled racked up 45 lays, mostly in between these longer term relationships. In the summer of 2017 in 3 months I had over 1100 tinder matches before I deleted my account to be with my last partner. I'm not a big muscly Chad, but I've grown into somewhat "pretty-boy" looks, I studied pickup in my early 20s, always optimize for logistics, and I generally have sky high confidence, energy levels, and low inhibition from being an entrepreneur. Not a bad combination if you're not a 6'2 jock.

Anyways, I wanted to write and reflect after ending things with my last partner. No, this is not some boohoo it's over story. Don't get me wrong it was something and I naturally feel sad. But on the day of the 'breakup' I literally woke up from another woman's bed and walked to the cafe. The day before that I bedded a new one in my office. Am I piece of shit? Probably not by what is preached by the senior TRP members. The breakup had nothing to do with me being a fuck boy. If anything that's what got us started in the first place, just being so 'different', 'mysterious', 'exciting', blah blah blah.

It came down to her doing a calculated weighing of options after over a year and realizing that the combination of her family hating me, the distance of studying in the next town over, and being surrounded by new options, and perhaps just the fading novelty tilted the calculation against me. There were other factors, such as sex-drive-lowering medication, that I think really played a part. But it doesn't matter, the pattern is this: time passed, commitment couldn't escalate passed a certain stage for two people in their 20s, and it ended. Did I make mistakes? Sure, I drank, I got demanding and controlling (I can't fucking stand smartphones and other people popping up), I basically just acted like someone's grandfather might have. That doesn't exactly fly in modern environments.

Overall she was fairly low on red flags. Very beautiful and intelligent, from a decent home with both parents, and pursuing a prestigious career. Maybe the career part is a legitimate red flag; at the very least it becomes an obstacle or logistical hurdle. Anyways, not perfect but I want to make clear that in this city she was probably top 95th percentile for women with good values. Yes they all suck and are all women, but there's still a spectrum of shittiness. She never went out for drinks with friends, didn't party or club, didn't spend extended time with guy friends, etc. I mean she still had them and there's always little shit here and there popping up on the smartphone but that's every woman now-a-days. She used to offer letting me check everything on all her devices which was sweet. I would say the first 6 months, I played the perfect aloof fuck boy, then things got serious and started to seem that they could be real, so I tried making them as proper as I could. She went along with most of it. But eventually external social pressures compounded by family hate for me broke through.

Anyways, point is she was pretty decent, I'm definitely catch, and actually provided a lot of support and positive qualities as well as the raw attraction and sex. This was something that one could imagine having easily worked out in a different time and place. I've now had 4 relationships that have lasted between 1 and 2 years, real long term stuff. And I've realized an important pattern: when commitment is high and things are fresh, problems are either swept aside and minimized, or enthusiastically worked out. When things go on longer and the relationship doesn't progress as it naturally would for our ancestors - then everything becomes a problem. And the problems build.

So my big theory is this: if the partner doesn't have your kid after some amount of time, they start looking to move on.

Seems like a weird conclusion to make, everyone's pretty much anti-kids from what I can tell in the West, and probably here on TRP too. Or maybe they'll have 1 or 2 when they're "settling down" at 30+. But here's the thing our ancestors had to deal with and work out: necessity. Males are valued when they are needed. If males are not needed, they are not valued. So by not being in a situation in which the average man is needed, the average man is fucked.

Males are wanted if they're in that small percentage group that can illicit extreme romantic intentions. But even that - how long does it last? Plates spin and fall off after some time of course. Relationships can drag things out longer because some intention and purpose towards the future is added. But that future never comes. Because that future, between a man and a woman, is meant to create a child and a family.

We don't even understand all the amazing things that happen to a woman's brain during pregnancy. But we do know for example that during (natural) childbirth, extreme amounts of hormones are released that bond the mother to her infant. It's not an evolutionary stretch to believe that humans would have mechanisms to bind the biological mother to the biological father, in order to ensure a high investment environment for the child. But it's also not an evolutionary stretch to believe that after the little child can fend for itself, mommy might consider getting some new genes for diversity purposes, while relying on existing infrastructure to raise them...

There always has and always will be a constant tension between men and women, between competing sexual objectives and tricky environmental trade-offs made by both. But with mostly stable monogamist societies with traditional values, we established a decent-enough trade-off. In fact, it's a lot like democracy: it sucks but it's better than any other system ever tried. The instability stems from the fact the the average woman is not attracted to the average man. So anything giving women more power and freedom necessarily rocks that boat.

The other big disrupter is birth control. It's unreal how much this technology has changed male/female relationships. Birth rates plummet. Relationships become commodities. Dangers are mitigated, and women can make much worse (and shorter term) choices and consciously give in because of the lack of consequences. The sexual revolution was The Great Lie to beta males the world over, and they bought it - hook, line, and sinker. Pussy doesn't "trickle down", it's like money: it concentrates to the top earners. An analogous lie was sold to the Western middle class regarding globalization. Yes, you get cheap Walmart goods. But your working wages are now in direct competition with the poorest parts of the world. Was it worth it?

Feminism and globalization are parallel forces to do with increasing access, and therefore increasing competition in a game where winners take all and everything valuable accumulates at the top to fewer and fewer people. They are forces to be reckoned with, and along with birth control technology, have led to the erosion of anything resembling the families started by your grandparents.

So what would I say to men reading this?

First of all, I would say that just because you can study TRP, improve yourself, and start becoming one of the more desirable guys, doesn't mean that you will enjoy this system long term. Unless you're a complete psychopath - and if so, power to you, that legitimately sounds like an easier life - you will not enjoy the modern Western (and increasingly online) dating markets.

Next I would say: stop propagating the bullshit that got us here in the first place. Whatever you do in your personal life, fine, but don't vote for anything that "opens up markets", gives women more power, and generally is socially liberal. I have zero sympathy for liberal cucks who will vote for dissolving the borders of a country then get upset when women start getting knocked up by Pablo the drug dealer who's just "so misunderstood" from down south.

There's no turning back a lot of things, but god damn don't make it worse. I'm not saying to vote Republican or anything (from what I can tell it's just a different side of the same globalist coin) but pick the lesser of evils for sure, and stand up for values that would lead to positive changes. I used to be an immature atheist, belittling religious people as irrational. But is there not rationality in living in a system where women are much more likely to be virgins, have strong values, and make better wives?

Though I guess the above paragraph is philosophical rather than actionable. I really don't know what to do. In the short term, you should just do what I did. Maximize your looks. From what I recall this can be a touchy subject on TRP, especially when stupid incels get autistic about it all. But here's the thing: TRP always tells you to work out and make your body more masculine. Of course, it increases attraction. So why not get lean, work out your jaw/neck/traps, get a photographer, and maximize your attraction even more directly? A Tinder photo that is 10% better doesn't get 10% more matches. It gets 10 times more matches.

I'm still trying to figure out what's next myself. Relating to my most recent experience, yeah I'll be sad for a bit, I'll bang it out fairly quickly, then what? I love focusing on my businesses, but honestly I want a family. I don't know what the right solution is for that. All I see are trade-offs, and a fucking annoying future. Do I want be thinking about random texts popping up on my future partner's phone in 5 years? That's fucked. Do I want to act like a fucking gang banger and just have baby mommas? I could do it, but that's also fucked. I have a few mature friends with similar TRP insights and there's not much of an optimal action plan anyone's come up with. One is going the baby momma route, another was married and now just manages it as best he can, another fucked off to Asia. These are the best options the Western man can come up with?

"We Don't Win Anymore" is a phrase that just came to mind. Trump tapped into something that wasn't just economic, but cultural as well. I'm not saying he's a great politician or a savior or even that he should've been President. But did anyone else really resonate with men at all? Did anyone else even pretend to allude to their pain and suffering and sense of loss? The sense of false dreams, both economic and personal? I don't think "enjoy the decline" is a useful thing to say to be honest. I've been "enjoying" it more than the vast majority of TRP members I reckon. I ain't enjoying it anymore.

Come on, let's not cope and pretend we can all just enjoy self improvement and mindless sex. First of all, many won't make it just due to genetics (bad looks, short height, poor muscle density, whatever). Second of all, there's no peace once you get there. It's monkey behavior: fuck to fuck. And you see how it all works, and the tricks you use start being used by other men against you. Then you're 30+ and you start entering "the leftover pool". Maybe now you'll settle down, maybe even with a mid 20s girl, but still ironically tricking yourself into the very thing you wanted to avoid: a woman who's still been around the block and is close enough to the wall she may as well be there. Because her best child rearing years are past, and gosh nobody has kids in their mid 20s, wait until 30 something why don't you!

And third of all, men want kids and family at some point, period. Denying this is beyond disingenuous.

It's not looking good boys. Those men going their own way are pretty lame but I understand where they're coming from. Maybe I'm just young and optimistic, but I still ask: is there no better we can do, than the expected outcome? You can improve a lot but still only do marginally better and not come close to what you really want.

A point I was trying to make in this blog post is that even men like me with a ridiculous amount of options encounter a ridiculous amount of ways that relationships can fail. And let's face it: men have been shit to other men. It's in our nature, we don't have group cohesion and shared interests nearly to the extent that women do. The violence and uncertainty of the past made us grow closer and stronger because we really did have shared interests, and big problems from other groups if we didn't achieve them. But now, in the West? It's a consumerist waste land. Male bonding is dead. I see some cucks playing video games or board games, but that doesn't count. Something is fundamentally wrong with the modern man. I see this all the time in entrepreneurship - lots of big talk, then giving up after a year. Better play it safe and have at least some career and status to your name, else when the day of reckoning comes in your 30s, you'll be hung out to dry.

There must be another way. There must be more to this. There must be better options out there.

If I think of anything, I'll let you know. And if you do, please share as well.

Cheers.

Tip S74RK for their post.