The Relationship "Win Condition"

Did you get dumped, or were you lucky enough to die of old age first?

The Red Pill (at least the old-school version thereof) tosses around a lot of great pessimistic catch phrases about the fairer sex, such as “All women are like that” and “She’s not yours, it’s just your turn”. Defenders of the fair sex like to tell us how unfair those catch phrases are, which is pretty hilarious in its own right, because that off-the-charts level of internet autism never fails to entertain. I love the internet.

Anyway, these catch phrases are specific examples of a much more central theme to The Red Pill: Women are human. (Men, too, but the target audience of The Red Pill isn’t interested in having sex with men, so babbling about what men are like is mostly just a silly little exercise in mental masturbation, which is the worst kind of masturbation because it exhausts you twice as much, is twice as embarrassing to be caught doing, and there’s no orgasm.)

But back to women: Women are human, not infallible angels, not logical and predictable computer programs. Human. And humans, while not always predictable, at least exhibit certain trends, one trend following another fun Red Pill catch phrase: “You get the behavior you incentivize”. Women, like all humans, will act in ways that they are incentivized to act — meaning ways that benefit them while having minimal consequences, or at least consequences that are outweighed by the benefits. Sometimes (often?) to the detriment of others.

Humans are social creatures, so the brains of women, not unlike the brains of other humans, will come up with rationalizations for why acting in a way that benefitted themselves was a great idea, warranted, justified, virtuous, etc., even when this behavior did not benefit, or was even detrimental to someone else. Even when to you and me, their behavior may appear quite obviously selfish, disloyal, manipulative, hedonistic, etc. That doesn’t matter. In a woman’s mind, her brain has rationalized her choices so that she sees herself as righteous and will have no problems looking in the mirror or sleeping at night.

The unflattering Red Pill catch phrases at the top of this rambling essay are meant to prepare men for the realities of a relationship with a woman, whether casual or more serious. Essentially, all relationships end. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. All relationships are moving toward their eventual end, for a variety of reasons.

“All women are like that” - when she is no longer attracted to you, or there is someone else she is more attracted to, all women will leave, cheat, and/or behave badly (e.g., act like a bitch and nothing you do is ever right or good enough because she’s feeling trapped and bored).

“She’s not yours, it’s just your turn” - as time passes, people grow comfortable, familiar — bored. They come to know less attractive and more vulnerable things about their partners. All relationships are on a path toward their eventual end, when your turn is over. There is no such thing as a forever-relationship. If humans lived to be 1,000 years old, the divorce rate would be 100%.

But humans don’t live 1,000 years, only around 100 years, and even then only the luckiest of us. Sometimes people stumble across the illusion of a forever-relationship by managing to die of old age before their partner leaves them. It’s not that their relationship was truly going to last forever. They just were lucky enough to die first. The “win condition” for a relationship is somebody dying before they get dumped.

Wow. That’s depressing.

But think about the alternative. What if we lived forever? Is it reasonable to expect a woman to loyally stay by our side for eternity, simply because we came along and locked her down before someone else did? She should be ours forever simply because we came along first?

As time passes, eventually, a woman is going to grow bored with you, or no longer attracted to you for other reasons. You will let your physical appearance or behavior go, or old age will simply take one or both of those from you. Or you may stay exactly the same but over time she becomes accustomed to you, is no longer wowed by you, and she will perceive you as less attractive even though you haven’t changed at all.

Her circumstances are not static either. She may come across an opportunity with another man she perceives as more attractive (“perceives” being the key word — he may objectively be roughly the same, or even worse-off, than you are, but she hasn’t had time to become bored with him yet). She may also improve her appearance, her professional situation, or something else about her life that causes her to feel more valuable, which would give her opportunities with better men.

In these cases, is a woman required to stay with you forever, simply because you came along first? Of course not. Nobody enjoys a relationship where one party doesn’t want to be there. And women, like all humans, behave the way they’re incentivized. If the benefits (new guy(s) she is not bored with and perceives as better) outweigh the consequences (your hurt feelings, fear of change/uncertainty, possible harm to reputation), her staying with you out of some sense of honor or virtue doesn’t make sense. Instead, her mind will come up with a rationalization why it is correct, justified, and righteous to leave you. That rationalization is also useful to help preserve her reputation (reducing one of the possible consequences).

But while time, age, and familiarity drag you and your relationship down like gravity, there is no hard and fast rule that you are required to become less attractive over time. You can always get in better shape than you currently are, improve your professional situation, improve your social situation, and improve your behavior toward a woman. You can’t beat time forever, but you can slow down the rate at which you become less desired by her.

And women are subject to the ravages of age as well. As time passes, their appearance and behaviors become less attractive, same as men. Women eventually reach a point where it is not feasible to dump their current man and start having sex and new relationships with men they find more attractive. They are simply too old and too ugly for these potentially more attractive men to want that.

So if that elusive win condition - dying before you get dumped - is something you want, it’s possible to slow the decline of your relationship by working to maintain your physical, professional, and social attractiveness and to retain strong boundaries and remain the more powerful one in your relationship. Meanwhile, as time passes, your woman’s remaining options to change her circumstances diminish. Work hard and for long enough, and eventually, she’ll be stuck with you. You’ll be the best she can do.

But let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that dying of old age while married is the same thing as a life well lived.