(A guest post by Vlad the Impaler)
Patri wrote in “Game Matters In Marriage Too“:
it should be clear that women look for more provider (beta!) characteristics in LTRs and more alpha characteristics in STRs.
I am not going to address the dangers of lumping all women together and making sweeping generalizations about their mating strategy, neither I am going to discuss those (quite numerous) women who intentionally seek pliant beta providers for husbands.
Instead I am going to approach this statement from an unexpected angle by examining a near-universal, but little appreciated phenomenon of “betaization” (the term coined by a PUA Franco).
What is “betaization”? Here it is: a woman mates with a masculine Lover type to whom she is attracted, they stay together and have passion for each other, but gradually, little-by-little, she starts trying to transform him into a beta-behaving Provider. As she slowly succeeds, her respect and sexual attraction for him start waning. It is a very familiar scenario – a story of Dave from Hawaii (before his transformation), as well as of countless other men.
If this scenario is allowed to play out to its extreme, the participants end up as a dysfunctional sexless couple of a clueless submissive provider husband who is continuously being pecked by his shrill frustrated wife. At this point there is a high probability that she will leave him or will cheat on him if another Lover will become available to her. Even if there is no eligible Lover at the moment, she might choose to end the relationship with her now-despised man but keep using him as her provider via alimony and child support. Not a pretty picture.
At first sight, it is a paradox: if the woman wanted a beta-like Provider, why didn’t she choose one to begin with? And if she wanted a alpha-like Lover, why would she try to betaize him, killing her own attraction in the process? It just does not make sense from the POV of our Male Logic.
However, there is a simple explanation to to this seeming paradox. Women are attracted to alpha-behaving Lovers because they possess superior genes (and often superior resources as well). The problem for a Lover’s mate that her position is inherently insecure – an untamed Lover might just leave her and go on sexing other women, he might not invest his resources in her and her progeny, etc. He has lots of options and she has lots of female competition looking to poach him.
So the truth is that the “right” strategy for a woman would be to snag an alpha-Lover and then “betaize” him so that he stays with her and invests his resources in her and her children.
Most PUA’s view betaization as an evil plot that has to be resisted by all means. I, however, see it in a more benign way: without a CERTAIN MEASURE of betaization stable LTR’s (foundation of human civilization) would not be possible. “Betaization” only becomes destructive if it is allowed to proceed to the point of loss of man’s alpha traits, while stable and happy LTR exists in that “sweet spot” when the man is betaized enough to stay in LTR and invest his resources in it, but still alpha enough to command woman’s respect and attraction. This “sweet spot” is the result of dynamic tension between woman’s betaization attempts and countervailing force of man’s desire to maintain his alphaness. Outside of this sweet spot the LTR is either not stable, not happy, or both.
So, for a man, what would the practical applications of Betaization Paradox ? There are a few:
- Your woman WILL try to betaize you, so do not take it personally and do not take offence when it happens – it is not a result of her bad will or some evil feminist conspiracy – it is just her evolutionary program running.
- Do not count on her stopping her betaization attempts at the “sweet spot” – her evolutionary program will make her pull incessantly in beta direction. Do not abdicate your responsibility as a man – it takes two people pulling in opposite directions to stay in the sweet spot. Maintain your alpha frame. This tension between two countervailing forces will also make your relationship more exciting.
- View her betaization attempts as tests. She is indeed testing you - testing whether you are still alpha enough to keep having sex with you. Do not give in to the temptation to just yield for the sake of peace – if you yield without resistance, you failed the test and weakened her attraction to you. You will have not “peace”, but another test, harder than the first..View it instead as an opportunity to show your alphaness. Passing the test will increase her attraction to you.
Discussion welcome.
Tags: alpha, beta, betaization, marriage
January 28, 2010 at 2:07 pm |
You sure are giving women a lot of power.
While I can see some of the things you are talking about that make it seem reasonable to frame certain relationship dynamics this way, I’m not sure how this particular framing makes it at all helpful to a happy LTR for both partners.
When I imagine myself in the male portion of the frame you suggest men hold, my initial response is “why the fuck do I need this shit?”
I prefer to look at things from the concept of differentiation, which ultimately is maintaining a healthy balance between togetherness and autonomy. Too much of either is bad for a good relationship. In order to have a long lasting relationship there has to be some relinquishing of autonomy, but too much relinquishing can lead to fusion/enmeshment.
Sometimes people mistake a person as trying to take more control of themselves (ie trying to get more autonomy) as trying to control someone else, especially when the partner doesn’t like the results of the person trying to get more control over themselves. Like you say, taking it personally, never helps. Figuring out what unmet need you have that may be triggering you to take something personally might be helpful. And figuring out whether you are doing something nice because you hope to get something out of the other person may also be helpful (I see this sort of indignant rage from nice guys who are nice in the hopes of getting something, rather than being kind because that is who they are.)
Another way to look at it, is many women are attracted to “brick wall” men because they have boundaries when compared to “jelly fish” men, who basically are the “nice guys” or “betas”. The ideal man is a “back bone” man, which is to say someone who is strong, yet flexible. Where a brick wall is too much autonomy, and a jelly fish is too much togetherness. (btw it is pretty easy for a person to flip flop between jelly fish and brick wall)
Ultimately I think I’m saying something very similar to you, but my framing of it is different, less battle of the sexes and more collaborative/understanding dynamics in non-stigmatized/charged language.
I don’t think any man wants to think of himself as beta or be one, and I don’t think any (healthy) woman wants to denigrate/emasculate a man in such a way.
But facts are, for any relationship to be stable long term, there ahs to be some give and take on both sides.
One of the initial appeals to me about pick up, is that it has men doing all the work! And I don’t think it is a man’s job to do all the work to maintain a long term relationship.
What are you asking of women?
January 31, 2010 at 12:03 pm |
The answer is that I am talking about a relationship that works in overall – there is attraction and rapport etc., so there is a value there for the guy. Otherwise, what is the point discussing how to keep it happy, if it is already not?
I do not see it as a battle of sexes, but rather as a “coopetition” – a mix of cooperation and competition. The truth is that we need each other, but ourr evolutionary goals are not identical, hence the inevitable tension. But I think we should embrace and learn to enjoy the differences and the tension inherent in any partnership, and that is what we are – partners, not the enemies that feminists (many of them, anyway) are trying to make of us.
A healthy woman still tests her man, albeit more subtly . But as I wrote, she needs to test to make sure she is giving her body to a worthy male – her reproductive interest drives her to test. I hope to write about how woman’s self esteem affects the way she tests in another post.
It goes without saying – this dynamic equilibrium of betaization is a part of such give and take.
Of course. And the question deserves a separate post, methinks…;-)
January 28, 2010 at 8:26 pm |
I think there a few other related/supplementary reasons for the apparent beta-ization behavior besides the one you’re describing:
-Males who were never really alphas-
1) There are always pretenders out there – betas who can play the part of an alpha on occasion, or for a time.
2) There are also false positives, women mistaking betas for alphas.
-Males who stop being alphas-
3) There may be males who tend to be alphas for a portion of their lives, but are then programmed to become betas earlier or later in life.
4) In so far as alpha-ness is caused by actually being an alpha (power, status – the ability to mate with more women), then some men may be alphas when they land the woman, but may become betas for a whole host of reasons later on.
1,2, and 4 would make it a costly mistake to mate or continue to mate with the male in question. #3 “might” make continued mating a mistake, particularly since males who tend to “stay” alpha probably have offspring who tend to “stay” alpha, and so you don’t want to get stuck having #3′s kids even if #3 ends up being a decent provider, at least under the “sexy-sons” mating strategy. So, females who stumbled upon a solution to this problem would be more likely to mate with alphas more frequently, and have more “true alpha” or “sticky-alpha” sons.
The simple solution that evolution seems to have stumbled upon to minimize the occurrence of each of these mistakes is to test and retest for alpha-ness continuously for as long as the female is fertile. If the male was never really an alpha, he will eventually fail the test, and if he was once an alpha but is no longer an alpha, he will fail the test, and further costly mistakes can be avoided.
January 31, 2010 at 11:30 am |
It is a fallacy to forget that “alpha” and “beta” are really just abstractions, very helpful but also very rough models of complex behaviors.
In fact, it is a lot more useful to talk about alpha- and beta- behaviors that about alpha- or beta- people, as such behaviors are situational. It is also necessary to keep in mind that “alpha” and “beta” behaviors are not two discrete sets but a continuous spectrum occupying space from “oh-so-alpha” all the way to “the lowest of beta”.
A real person might exhibit behaviors that occupy different places on that scale (depending on the situation), but for the majority exhibit some consistency in staying in one area (hence giving terms alpha- and beta- people some meaning). That area may (or may not) shift over at different times in a person’s life. The betaization by an LTR is one example of such a shift.
Betaization is an attempt by a woman to get her man in the zone where he would stay and invest his resources and at the same time it is her test of how solid is his “alpha-stickiness” – so I am in agreement with your last paragraph (with the caveat about meaning of alphaness when applied to person vs. behavior).
January 29, 2010 at 12:29 am |
I think the alpha/beta split has a much greater paradox. If ‘alpha’ is a valid way of describing certain men, and these men have the genes that women prefer, why is it that there are so many more betas than alphas? If alphas were getting all the sex and betas were doing all the providing, how come most of the progeny is beta?
Your article goes a good way toward suggesting an answer though. You describe betas as the product of a process of ‘beta-ization’ rather than a genetic thing – in other words, most men are born alpha (just like their fathers), but a fatal flaw in men – the desire for relief from a woman’s unending nagging and inherent discontent – is what makes them susceptible to being ground down into nag-meat betas.
January 31, 2010 at 9:18 am |
I have no simple answer to the issue of why”beta genes” did not disappear from the population, however I do have some hunches for several possible explanations:
- Having too many alpha males is bad for society – a case of “too many chiefs and not enough Indians”. Note that “macho” societies (Arab, Lat. American) are less cohesive and less successful than the ones that discourage such behavior by males (Western, E. Asian).
So when percentage of alphas exceed certain threshold, being alpha probably turns into a disadvantage, which in the long term will lead to an equilibrium with number of alphas oscillating around this threshold.
- Let us not forget that “humans” do not equal “males”. It could be that
the same gene(s) that manifest as “beta behavior” in males, helds some important advantage for women, so they get passed on.
- AFAIK, there are also no conclusive answers to similar questions about why genes for small height, or, say, homosexuality did not disappear. Obviously, tall men and straight men breed more that their opposites. The
general answer is that the nature favors balance and diversity, but the exact mechanism is not clear.
- I do not think it is correct to say that most men are born alpha and then get it ground out of them – it is clear to any unbiased observer of toddlers (or of animal litters) that it is not the case. However, quite a few of male adolescents and young adults get some of their alphaness rubbed out of them by a process called “socialization”.
January 29, 2010 at 7:05 am |
Like the post. The more directly the info can be applied to one’s own LTR/marriage, the more useful the post. This helped put the man’s role in the LTR dynamic in perspective. It’s a constant battle.
January 31, 2010 at 8:34 am |
Yes, that is what I am trying to do – to translate general concepts into practically useful steps.
As for “constant battle”, I prefer a different frame – the one of “dynamic equilibrium”. Some amount of tension is healthy.
February 5, 2010 at 11:28 pm |
I think there are a couple of things driving this. First, don’t overlook that alphas and betas are not absolute conditions. In addition to serving as somewhat abstract constructs or as behavioral tags (as Vlad says), the terms are also entirely defined by context. That is, one isn’t “alpha” by some independent measure. One is only “alpha” when surrounded by enough betas to create the contrast. Think of it this way: if you could magically increase the number of alphas in the world, it might take a while but I suspect you would eventually up the alpha threshold like so much grade inflation. (Proof point: how do you know that 90% of men today are not alpha if judged by the standards of the middle ages?) In this light, and in the long run, it makes about as much sense to ask why there aren’t more alphas in the world as it does to ask why there aren’t a greater percentage of men in the top decile for finishing a marathon. I think this is Matt Ridley’s point in Red Queen. The alpha (and your question) is a moving target. His success (and your answer) is something of an arms race.
Second, recall that betas still get laid. They might not get laid to as many different women, but they still pass along their genes. Thinking back to earlier human generations (when extracurricular female sex was less “empowering”), I wonder if it was even the most assured way of passing along one’s genes. A lower risk, but more guaranteed reward-type outcome. Again, Matt Ridley has something to say about this. If I recall, he describes how the relative success of the alpha vs. beta mating strategy is entirely regulated by female sexuality. (Moreover, I recall gibbons, grouse, and male blackbirds as examples of beta-successful breeders, but my recall is now foggy on these specifics.)
Props to Vlad for the original post, btw.
February 10, 2010 at 7:31 pm |
Yes, alpha and beta behaviors are situational, there is probably no one gene that determines alphaness and children get their genes from both parents anyway, so alphas breeding more does not necessarily mean the increase in percentage of alphas with each subsequent generation. I do not believe that we moderns are more noticeably alpha than ancients of 30 or 40 generations ago.
And yes, betas also get laid and breed. Arguably the “patriarchal” way of life typical of agricultural societies and (centered on monogamous marriage and suppression of female sexuality) had evolved to give (most) betas a stake in the social order in the form of a woman that was obligated to have sex and to breed exclusively with her beta mate. Under some conditions prevalent at that time (rife STD’s, execution or murder as penalty for seducing reputable women) the beta mating strategy of “providing for and guarding” one’s woman begins to look quite attractive
February 15, 2010 at 2:07 pm |
[...] choose healthy vs. provider mate based on environment By patrissimo In response to Vlad’s beta-ization post, Sarah B writes in with a comment: To anyone who listens to this sort of stuff: Why don’t [...]
August 18, 2010 at 7:02 am |
“Having too many alpha males is bad for society – a case of “too many chiefs and not enough Indians”. Note that “macho” societies (Arab, Lat. American) are less cohesive and less successful than the ones that discourage such behavior by males (Western, E. Asian). ”
Firstly, what do you mean by successful? If you mean economically prosperous then Latin America is not successful due to outside interference, mainly from the imperialists to the north of them. Also, the arabs were very far advanced for many years, laying the foundations for modern mathematics by giving us the concept of zero and the tools of algebra and also modern means agricultural techniques. Much of what stopped them advancing was again colonisation/exploitation, not the fact that they were too macho. Also, what do you mean by macho? Do you mean machistic behaviours/attitude that degrade women?
Secondly, if by cohesive you mean sense of community and general “togetherness” in society I don’t see how you can believe that to exist in the west, where self-centred individualism reigns supreme. But I agree that east asian societies are very cohesive as they have a collectivist or group mentality compared to the west.